Facial Manipulations, Emotional Empathy, and Facial Feedback

Abstract

According to the facial feedback hypothesis (FFH) one’s own facial expressions have a corresponding impact on the subjective experience of emotion. Inspired by Strack, et al. [1] participants in the present study hold a wooden stick between the teeth (forming a smile) or between the lips (forming a sulky face) while rating humorous films. In contrast to the FFH it was found that people scoring low in emotional empathy rated humorous films as less funny in a happy versus a sulky facial manipulation whereas people high in emotional empathy did not differ between the two facial manipulations. However, in Experiment 2 the “Voluntary facial action technique” [2] was applied in which the participants were required to specifically smile or frown to the different films. The results demonstrated that participants low as well as high in emotional empathy reacted as predicted by the facial feedback hypothesis. In conclusion, emotional empathy is suggested to be related to effects of facial feedback in some facial manipulations but not in others.