Abstract
Understanding the emotions of others is essential in social interactions. Emotional information often needs to be processed and interpreted quickly and accurately, a process of which the realization is not entirely known. An important form in which emotion is expressed in social interaction is through our facial expressions. Through subtle
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differences in facial muscle activation, a person can show how he or she feels. Research shows that we use our facial muscles not only to express emotion, but also to simulate the emotion we perceive in others.
Simulation of perceived emotion occurs when a certain amount of activation of the same neural connections, brain areas, and muscles that are active when the person experiences the emotion become active during the perception of this emotion. For example, when a person sees a happy face, the muscles used to produce a smile (the zygomaticus major) become more active in the observer, a process also called facial mimicry. From the embodied cognition perspective, it is assumed that not only our brain and cognitive functions, but also the body and physical activity are part of cognition. In line with the embodied cognition perspective, it is therefore thought that one of the functions of emotion simulation is to facilitate emotion understanding.
This thesis focuses on the role of facial mimicry in the understanding of other people's emotions as expressed in facial expressions or words. First of all, we have reviewed recent literature in which the role of facial mimicry in the understanding of emotion is investigated by measurements of facial muscles (EMG), and measurements of emotion understanding when facial mimicry is not possible (temporarily or chronically). In addition, in the empirical part of this thesis, we investigated emotion understanding in combination with measurements of facial muscle activation (EMG), as well as emotion understanding in patients who are limited in the use of their facial muscles, i.e. patients with facial paresis.
The research described in this thesis suggests that facial muscles mainly respond to the valence of the perceived emotional information, and that facial mimicry may be less important for understanding emotion than previously thought. Our results are in line with the notion that facial mimicry is especially important in emotion understanding when a clear picture cannot be formed and emotion understanding cannot easily be established on the basis of other available sources of information. These findings are in line with the embodied cognition perspective, and support the idea that simulation of perceived emotion can provide useful information to the simulator, especially when the representation of emotional expressions cannot easily be established.
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