Emotions comprise observable behaviors that can be potentially decoded by bystanders as signals of the respective emotions. Although the efficiency of such decoding has been assumed to be high for a number of universal Emotional Facial Expressions (EFE), correct appraisals of EFE depend on a number of factors, including maturation and experience, physiognomy and individual dynamics of facial action, the familiarity between actor and observer and context. Perceiver’s individual traits are neglected factors in appraisal studies of emotional facial behavior. Possibly the most critical of these receiver traits - Emotional Empathy (an embodied component of Empathy) - is finally emerging in recent studies as influential in physiological reactions to and appraisals toward at least some facial expressions of emotion such as happy and angry posed prototypical facial expressions. It is yet to be determined if the ability to appraise EFE is independent of Emotional Empathy (EE) but we believe indeed that the later could be a critical predictor of correct appraisals of various emotions, including spontaneous EFE, which have been pointed as much harder than the posed ones to correctly appraise, and of related subsequent behaviors (eg. aggressive conducts). So, in the project, we explored such predictions. To the extent of our knowledge no study has purposefully looked into the dispersion of various psychobiological measures of EE (e.g., automatic mimicry assessed by facial EMG or behavior, and arousal, assessed via skin conductance) at early ages, although a large dispersion on such EE measures (facial EMG) became evident in a study with adults. This is important because widely used measures such as Empathy questionnaires can have scores affected by social desirability.

Because not all emotions are behaviorally conspicuous and some are much more easily and efficiently decoded (e.g. Joy-playful) than others, we believe EE can be the factor that allows some individuals to overcome this difference. 

GOALS:

By studying a wider scope of emotions we expected to identify more grades of Emotional Empathy (EE), and to be able to establish an efficient protocol for early detection of Low and High EE in nonclinical populations. We addressed an old theoretical discussion of the evolution of signal and response, and specifically “what do facial expressions express?”. We have suggested earlier that individual variation in the display of emotion is related to cost of signaling and advantages of the actor in conveying information about intentions, proximal action tendencies, and other personal and interactive relevant information, and most of all to the “interactive” nature of the given emotion. We anticipate that receivers should be more convergent in their decoding of the interactive/visible emotions, whereas other emotions should reveal larger interindividual differences. This is in line with the Behavioral Ecology view of EFE, which has been advocated both in the Emotion Psychology and Ethology literature, contending the existence of a link between emotion expression and appraisal, specifically in the case of the prototypical EFE. We aim to investigate if and to what extent EE allows highly empathic individuals to perform better overall at decoding perceived emotional stimuli, especially at overcoming the “low visibility” of certain EFE. With this approach, we contributed to the discussion of the co-evolution of emotional signals and decoding ability.