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2020 (English)In: Experimental psychology (Göttingen), ISSN 1618-3169, E-ISSN 2190-5142, Vol. 67, no 1, p. 14-22Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
In this experiment, we replicated the effect of muscle engagement on perception such that the recognition of another's facial expressions was biased by the observer's facial muscular activity (Blaesi & Wilson, 2010). We extended this replication to show that such a modulatory effect is also observed for the recognition of dynamic bodily expressions. Via a multitab and within-subjects approach, we investigated the emotion recognition of point-tight biological walkers, along with that of morphed face stimuli, white subjects were or were not holding a pen in their teeth. Under the pen-in-the-teeth condition, participants tended to tower their threshold of perception of happy expressions in facial stimuli compared to the no-pen condition, thus replicating the experiment by Blaesi and Wilson (2010). A similar effect was found for the biological motion stimuli such that participants Lowered their threshold to perceive happy walkers in the pen-in-the-teeth condition compared to the no-pen condition. This pattern of results was also found in a second experiment in which the no-pen condition was replaced by a situation in which participants held a pen in their lips (pen-in-tips condition). These results suggested that facial muscular activity alters the recognition of not only facial expressions but also bodily expressions.
Keywords
face, emotions, biological motion, mirror neurons, embodied cognition
National Category
Psychology
Research subject
Psychology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-183608 (URN)10.1027/1618-3169/a000470 (DOI)000540715100003 ()32394814 (PubMedID)
2020-07-212020-07-212022-02-26Bibliographically approved