Mimicry and the judgment of emotional facial expressions

Lipps (1907) presented a model of empathy which had an important influence on later formulations. According to Lipps, individuals tend to mimic an int eraction partner's behavior, and this nonverbal mimicry induces-via a feedb ack process-the corresponding affective state in the observer. The resultin g shared affect is believed to foster the understanding of the observed per son's self. The present study tested this model in the context of judgments of emotional facial expressions. The results confirm that individuals mimi c emotional facial expressions, and that the decoding of facial expressions is accompanied by shared affect. However, no evidence that emotion recogni tion accuracy or shared affect are mediated by mimicry was found. Yet, volu ntary mimicry was found to have some limited influence on observer's assess ment of the observed person's personality The implications of these results with regard to Lipps' original hypothesis are discussed.