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I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry

Eye contact is an essential element of human interaction and direct eye gaze has been shown to have effects on a range of attentional and cognitive processes. Specifically, direct eye contact evokes a positive affective reaction. As such, it has been proposed that obstructed eye contact reduces emot...

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Autores principales: Mauersberger, Heidi, Kastendieck, Till, Hess, Ursula
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9556997/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248540
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.970954
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author Mauersberger, Heidi
Kastendieck, Till
Hess, Ursula
author_facet Mauersberger, Heidi
Kastendieck, Till
Hess, Ursula
author_sort Mauersberger, Heidi
collection PubMed
description Eye contact is an essential element of human interaction and direct eye gaze has been shown to have effects on a range of attentional and cognitive processes. Specifically, direct eye contact evokes a positive affective reaction. As such, it has been proposed that obstructed eye contact reduces emotional mimicry (i.e., the imitation of our counterpart’s emotions). So far, emotional mimicry research has used averted-gaze faces or unnaturally covered eyes (with black censor bars) to analyze the effect of eye contact on emotional mimicry. However, averted gaze can also signal disinterest/ disengagement and censor bars obscure eye-adjacent areas as well and hence impede emotion recognition. In the present study (N = 44), we used a more ecological valid approach by showing photos of actors who expressed either happiness, sadness, anger, or disgust while either wearing mirroring sunglasses that obstruct eye contact or clear glasses. The glasses covered only the direct eye region but not the brows, nose ridge, and cheeks. Our results confirm that participants were equally accurate in recognizing the emotions of their counterparts in both conditions (sunglasses vs. glasses). Further, in line with our hypotheses, participants felt closer to the targets and mimicked affiliative emotions more intensely when their counterparts wore glasses instead of sunglasses. For antagonistic emotions, we found the opposite pattern: Disgust mimicry, which was interpreted as an affective reaction rather than genuine mimicry, could be only found in the sunglasses condition. It may be that obstructed eye contact increased the negative impression of disgusted facial expressions and hence the negative feelings disgust faces evoked. The present study provides further evidence for the notion that eye contact is an important prerequisite for emotional mimicry and hence for smooth and satisfying social interactions.
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spelling pubmed-95569972022-10-14 I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry Mauersberger, Heidi Kastendieck, Till Hess, Ursula Front Psychol Psychology Eye contact is an essential element of human interaction and direct eye gaze has been shown to have effects on a range of attentional and cognitive processes. Specifically, direct eye contact evokes a positive affective reaction. As such, it has been proposed that obstructed eye contact reduces emotional mimicry (i.e., the imitation of our counterpart’s emotions). So far, emotional mimicry research has used averted-gaze faces or unnaturally covered eyes (with black censor bars) to analyze the effect of eye contact on emotional mimicry. However, averted gaze can also signal disinterest/ disengagement and censor bars obscure eye-adjacent areas as well and hence impede emotion recognition. In the present study (N = 44), we used a more ecological valid approach by showing photos of actors who expressed either happiness, sadness, anger, or disgust while either wearing mirroring sunglasses that obstruct eye contact or clear glasses. The glasses covered only the direct eye region but not the brows, nose ridge, and cheeks. Our results confirm that participants were equally accurate in recognizing the emotions of their counterparts in both conditions (sunglasses vs. glasses). Further, in line with our hypotheses, participants felt closer to the targets and mimicked affiliative emotions more intensely when their counterparts wore glasses instead of sunglasses. For antagonistic emotions, we found the opposite pattern: Disgust mimicry, which was interpreted as an affective reaction rather than genuine mimicry, could be only found in the sunglasses condition. It may be that obstructed eye contact increased the negative impression of disgusted facial expressions and hence the negative feelings disgust faces evoked. The present study provides further evidence for the notion that eye contact is an important prerequisite for emotional mimicry and hence for smooth and satisfying social interactions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9556997/ /pubmed/36248540 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.970954 Text en Copyright © 2022 Mauersberger, Kastendieck and Hess. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Mauersberger, Heidi
Kastendieck, Till
Hess, Ursula
I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
title I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
title_full I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
title_fullStr I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
title_full_unstemmed I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
title_short I looked at you, you looked at me, I smiled at you, you smiled at me—The impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
title_sort i looked at you, you looked at me, i smiled at you, you smiled at me—the impact of eye contact on emotional mimicry
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9556997/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248540
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.970954
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