Abstract
Can reading others' emotional states be shaped by expertise? We assessed processing of emotional facial expressions in professional actors trained either to voluntary activate mimicry to reproduce character's emotions (as foreseen by the “Mimic Method”), or to infer others' inner states from reading the emotional context (as foreseen by “Stanislavski Method”). In explicit recognition of facial expressions (Experiment 1), the two experimental groups differed from each other and from a control group with no acting experience: the Mimic group was more accurate, whereas the Stanislavski group was slower. Neither acting experience, instead, influenced implicit processing of emotional faces (Experiment 2). We argue that expertise can selectively influence explicit recognition of others' facial expressions, depending on the kind of “emotional expertise”.
Highlights
Identification of emotional facial expressions is an ability of high surviving value that can be accomplished through activation of two main mechanisms, i.e., simulation and mentalizing (Goldman and Sripada, 2005; Decety and Grezès, 2006; SchulteRüther et al, 2007; Apperly, 2008; Bastiaansen et al, 2009)
Post-hoc comparisons on the main effect of emotion showed that happiness, surprise, and disgust were significantly easier to be recognized than the other emotions, whereas sadness, anger and fear did not differ between each other (p > 0.036)
The first main finding of the present study is the demonstration that recognition of emotional facial expressions can be shaped by experience in a highly specific fashion depending on the nature of the training experience
Summary
Identification of emotional facial expressions is an ability of high surviving value that can be accomplished through activation of two main mechanisms, i.e., simulation and mentalizing (Goldman and Sripada, 2005; Decety and Grezès, 2006; SchulteRüther et al, 2007; Apperly, 2008; Bastiaansen et al, 2009). On other hand, mentalizing, known as theory of mind (Frith and Frith, 1999), can be conceived of as those higher cognitive operations devoted to infer other people’s mental states from their actions, gestures, faces and the surrounding context. Such an information-based approach would play a crucial role in social interactions, because inferential processes would enable humans to decode other people’s intentions and to modify behaviour (Blakemore, 2010). Recent neurofunctional studies showed that mentalizing-related brain areas, such as medial frontal cortex or temporo-parietal junction, are activated during recognition of facial expressions (Schulte-Rüther et al, 2007; Peelen et al, 2010; Mattavelli et al, 2011)
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