Abstract
The spontaneous mimicry of others' emotional facial expressions constitutes a rudimentary form of empathy and facilitates social understanding. Here, we show that human participants spontaneously match facial expressions of an android physically present in the room with them. This mimicry occurs even though these participants find the android unsettling and are fully aware that it lacks intentionality. Interestingly, a video of that same android elicits weaker mimicry reactions, occurring only in participants who find the android “humanlike.” These findings suggest that spontaneous mimicry depends on the salience of humanlike features highlighted by face-to-face contact, emphasizing the role of presence in human-robot interaction. Further, the findings suggest that mimicry of androids can dissociate from knowledge of artificiality and experienced emotional unease. These findings have implications for theoretical debates about the mechanisms of imitation. They also inform creation of future robots that effectively build rapport and engagement with their human users.
Highlights
A key task for psychology and related disciplines is to identify mechanisms that allow humans to understand others, quickly respond to them, and coordinate mutual actions
The results of Study 1 reveal that some aspect of ‘‘human-android’’ relationship plays a critical role in spontaneous mimicry
The android mimicry was weaker than spontaneous mimicry of a human, and was evident only in the zygomaticus muscle
Summary
A key task for psychology and related disciplines is to identify mechanisms that allow humans to understand others, quickly respond to them, and coordinate mutual actions One mechanism supporting these capacities is imitation [1,2]. As shown by a large body of research, the mere viewing of expressions can spontaneously and rapidly activate congruent facial muscles such that perceivers, for example, smile in response to a smile and frown in response to a frown [5,6]. Such behavior can, under some conditions, support recognition of emotional states (e.g., [7,8]). Spontaneous mimicry promotes empathy, rapport, contagion, and social coordination [9,10] via a variety of psychological and neural mechanisms [9,11,12]
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