Emotional Empathy and Facial Reactions to Facial Expressions

This study investigates whether people high in emotional empathy are more facially reactive than are people low in emotional empathy when exposed to pictures of angry and happy facial expressions. Facial electromyographic activity was measured from the corrugator and the zygomatic muscle regions. In accordance with the predictions, the high empathic group reacted with larger corrugator activity to angry as compared to happy faces and with larger zygomatic activity to happy faces. However, the low empathic group did not differentiate between the angry and happy stimuli at all. The high empathic group, as compared to the low empathic group, also rated the angry faces as expressing more anger and the happy faces as being happier. It is concluded that high empathic people are particularly sensitive in reacting with facial reactions to facial expressions and that this ability is accompanied by a higher level of empathic accuracy.