Training the face : does training facial mimicry affect cross-modal emotion recognition and emotion contagion?

Details

Supervisors

Vermeulen, Nicolas ; Kever, Anne

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques

Abstract

Since the 1970's, when it was discovered that emotions are expressed similarly by people of different cultures, facial expressions have attracted a great interest in psychological literature. Especially facial mimicry, a phenomenon which can be defined as the copying of another's facial expressions, has been studied thoroughly. Interestingly, numerous studies have shown that blocking facial mimicry can impair emotion recognition and emotional processing. However, very little research has focused on whether it is possible to improve emotional abilities by enhancing voluntary facial expressions and facial mimicry. In order to address this issue, the present thesis first provides a brief review of the existing literature in the field facial mimicry and then presents findings of a new study, during which participants took part in an individualized training program designed to improve voluntary facial expressions and facial mimicry. During the study, participants receiving the mimicry training were compared to an active control group training in drawing self-portraits. Outcomes on face-based, as well as vocalization-based emotion recognition, and emotion contagion were assessed. Furthermore, individual differences in emotional competencies, emotion contagion, and self-consciousness were controlled by self-report questionnaires. We predicted that training facial mimicry, as compared to training self-portraiture, would lead to higher improvements in emotion recognition and emotion contagion. However, results revealed that both groups improved equally well in face-based and vocalization-based emotion recognition tasks. Only mixed results were observed for measures of emotion contagion. These findings will be discussed in the light of existing literature and the studies limitations.