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Facial expressions are contagious

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Jorrrnal of Psychophysiology 9 (1995) 203-211 O 1995 European Federation of Psychophysiology Socielies

FaciaI expressions are contagious

Lars-Olov Lundqvist and Ulf Dimberg
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden

Date of acceptence: January 1 l , 1995

Keywords: Facial reaction, electromyography, ernotional contagion, facial expression, ernotional expe-
rience

ABSTBACT The aim of the present study was to explore whether subiects exposed to stimuli of facial
expressions respond with specific facial muscle reaction patterns that correspond to specific emotional
experiences, and whether these response patterns are consistent with the ernotional contagion hypothesis.
Gender differences concerning susceptibility to emotional contagion were also examined. The facial EMG
from the M.zygomaticus major, the M. levator labii, the frontal M. lateralis, and the M. corrugator supercilii
muscle regions, as well as emotional experiences were recorded while male and female subiects were
exposed to pictures of faces expressing sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, as well as neutral
facial expressions. The results revealed that subiects to a certain extent both mirnicked and experienced
an emotion similar to that expressed by the stimulus persons. Even though some of the results in the present
study were inconsistent with the hypothesis that facial expressions are contagious, it was concluded that
facial expressions are one important channel for emotional contagion to occur. There were no overall
gender differences. Consistent with earlier research, however, females tended to respond with more intense
M.zygomaticus major activity to happy faces compared with males.

Since Adam Smith (175911976) there have
been several observations describing peoples'
tendency to imitate or mimic the facial and
bodily expressions of others' (e.g., Darwin,
1872;Maraiion, 1950;McDougall, 1928;Ribot,
1897). These observations suggest that people
can "catch" the emotions of others' in a social
situation (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1992;
Hsee, Hatfield, Carlson, & Chemtob, 1990),
which recently has been conceptualized as the
phenomenon of emotional contagion. Emo-
tional contagion is defined as "the tendency to
automatically mimic and synchronize move-
ments, expressions, postures, and vocalizations
with those of another person and, consequent-
ly, to converge emotionally" (Hatfield, et al.,
1992,pp. 153-154). Thus, it is argued that emo-
tional contagion may operate through differ-
ent non-verbal channels, such as vocal sounds,
bodily postures, and facial expressions. Results
consistent with the hypothesis that facial ex-
pressions are contagious have been demon-
strated by research using a facial electromyo-
graphic (EMG) procedure. That is, subjects ex-
posed to stimuli of angry and happy facial
expressions were found to respond with specif-
ic EMG reaction patterns from the facial mus-
cles that are contracted when iorming an angry
or happy facial expression, respectively (Dim-
berg, 1982,1988 a, 1990a, 1991,1993; Dimberg
& Christmanson, 1991; Dimberg & Lundqvist,
1990). It has further been found that subjects
exposed to other facial expressions (e. g., faces
of surprise, sadness, fear, and disgust) also react
with facial responses interpretable as mimick-
ing behavior (Lundqvist, in press). It is thus
clear that results from facial EMG research
support the hypothesis that facial expressions
are contagious.
However, it has been debated whether facial
mimicking behavior is accompanied by a cor-
responding emotional experience (Hatfield et
al., 1992) or if facial mimicry is purely a com-
municative act, independent of the responders
emotional state (e. g., Bavelas, Black, Lemery,
& Mullett, 1986, 1987; Kraut & Johnston,
1979). If facial expressions are to be regarded
as contagious, it is important to demonstrate
that the evoked facial reactions are accompa-
nied by a corresponding emotional experience
(Hatfield et al., 1992). One such study was per-
formed by Dimberg (1988 a), which showed

that the exposure to happy faces evoked not
only a congruent facial response, but also an
increased experience of happiness. While that
study supports the contagion hypothesis, it re-
mains to be explored whether the phenome-
non is also valid for other facial expressions.
Moreover, earlier research on facial EMG
and gender differences shows that females
tend to be more facially expressive when ex-
posed to different stimuli (Dimberg, 1990b;
Schwartz, Brown, & Ahern, 1980). Relevant
for the present context is the finding that fe-
males showed more pronounced facial EMG
reactions when exposed to angry and happy fa-
cia1 expressions (Dimberg & Lundqvist, 1990).
In particular, females reacted with more in-
tense M. zygomaticus major activity to happy
faces compared with males. Females are also
reported to show higher nonverbal receiving
ability compared with males (for reviews, see
Buck, 1984; Hall, 1978). Thus, it can be argued
that females may be more susceptible to emo-
tional contagion compared with males.
The main purpose of the present study was
to investigate whether the effect of contagion
holds for other facial expressions in addition to
happy faces (Dimberg, 1988a). A second pur-
pose was to explore whether females are more
sensitive to emotional contagion than males.
Male and female subjects were thus exposed to
faces expressing sadness, anger, fear, Surprise,
disgust, happiness, as we11 as neutral faces,
while their EMG activity from different facial
muscle regions was measured. The muscle re-
gions of the M. zygomaticus major (pulls the lip
corner up and back), the M. levator labii supe-
rioris (raises the upper lip and widens the nos-
trils), the frontal M. lateralis (raises the brow),
and the M. corrugator supercilii (knits the
brow) were recorded (Fridlund & Cacioppo,
1986; Hjortsj, 1970). Furthermore, the emo-
tional experiences of sadness, anger, fear, dis-
gust, surprise, and happiness were measured.
It was predicted that stimuli of happy faces
should evoke an increase in M.zygomaticus
major activity and an increase in the experi-
ence of happiness. Furthermore, it was expect-
ed that stimuli of faces expressing disgust
should elicit an increase in M. levator labii ac-
tivity and an increase in the experience of dis-
gust, whereas stimuli of surprise faces should
evoke an increase in frontal M. lateralis and an
increase in the experience of surprise. More-
over, stimuli of faces expressing sadness, an-
.-O. LUNDQVIST AND U. DIMBERG
ger, and fear should evoke an increase in
M. corrugator supercilii activity. Even if the
registration of the activity from the M. corru-
gator supercilii muscle region does not provide
suficientinformation to differentiate between
sad, angry, and fearful faces, different effects
for the experience of emotion were expected.
That is, the stimuli of faces expressing sadness,
anger, and fear were predicted to evoke an in-
crease in the experience of sadness, anger, and
fear, respectively. Finally, it was expected that
female subjects should respond with more pro-
nounced facial EMG reactions and possibly
also with more intense emotional experience
compared with males.
Method
Subjects
Fifty-six psychology students at Uppsala Uni-
versity, 28 males and 28 females, with an aver-
age age of 26.4 years (SD f SA), were each paid
$10 to participate in the experiment.
Apparatus and data scoring
The subjects were tested individually in a
sound-attenuated room. They were exposed to
slides of males and females displaying sadness,
anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, as we11
as displaying neutral facial expressions. The
slides, which were selected from Ekman and
Friesen's (1976) Pictures of facial affect, were
projected onto a screen 1.5m in front of the
subject producing a picture of 30 x 45 cm. The
exposure time was set at 8 s and controlled by
an electronic timer that, together with the oth-
er equipment, was placed outside the sound-at-
tenuated room.
Bipolar EMG recordings were made from
the left side of the subject's face with Beckman
miniature surface AgIAgC1 electrodes (diam-
eter 2 mm), filled with Beckman electrode
paste. Before attaching the electrodes, the skin
was cleaned with alcohol dipped cotton-tips
and then rubbed with electrode paste to de-
crease inter-electrode impedance. All inter-
electrode impedance was reduced to less than
10kQ (Fridlund & Cacioppo, 1986).
The electrodes were attached according to
Fridlund and Cacioppo's (1986) Guidelines for
human electromyographic research. All elec-
trode locations refer to electrode centers. The
M. zygomaticus major muscle activity was re-
 FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAGIOUS
corded by placing the electrodes 1cm apart on
an imaginary line from the corner of the mouth
to the cheek-bone. The activity rom the
M. levator labii muscle region was recorded by
placing one electrode l cm lateral to the nostril
and the second electrode l cm superior to the
first. Thus, activity from both the M. levator
labii superioris alaeque nasi and the M. levator
labii superioris muscles was recorded. To de-
tect the activity from the rontal M. lateralis
muscle region, the electrodes were placed 1cm
apart on an imaginary vertical line 1cm lateral
to the vertical line that traverses the pupil, with
the inferior electrode affixed I cm above the
eyebrow. Finally, the activity from the M. cor-
rugator supercilii muscle region was recorded
by placing the electrodes l cm apart, with one
electrode attached directly above the brow on
an imaginary vertical line through the inner
border of the iris and the second electrode at
the border of the eyebrow head.
The electrodes were connected to Coul-
bourn Hi Gain Amplifiers with low-pass filters
set at 1000Hz and, to reduce low-frequency
noise determined by movement artifacts, high-
pass filters were set at 10Hz with a roll-off at
12dBloctave. A notch filter at 50Hz was in-
stalled to diminish interference from the elec-
tric mains. The raw EMG signals were ana-
lyzed by Coulbourn contour following integra-
tors with the time constant set at .O2 s, and then
digitized online at 100Hz per channel by a
Coulbourn 12 bit A/D converter and finally
stored on an IBM XT computer. All analyses
were performed on arbitrary data units. The
data were scored as phasic responses; that is,
as the change between the mean activity dur-
ing the stimulus presentation and the pre-stirn-
ulus level. The pre-stimulus level was defined
as the mean activity during the l-s period im-
mediately before stimulus onset.
The self-experience of emotion was mea-
sured by an abbreviated Swedish version of the
"Differential Emotions Scale" (DES) (Izard,
Dougherty, Bloxom, & Kotsch, 1974). Ratings
were performed for the experience of sadness,
anger, fear, disgust, surprise, and happiness,
where each emotion was represented by three
, items (Izard et al., 1974). Thus, 18 items per
i stimulus had to be completed. The subjects
i: were requested to mark their responses on an-
I alog rating scales consisting of 100mm lines
i with the labels "not at all" followed by "slight-
i ly," "moderately," "considerably," and "very
205
strong." The scores were summed for the three
items that represented a given emotion, Scores
for each emotion could vary between O and
300.
Procedure
The subjects were told that the purpose of the
experiment was to measure physiological reac-
tions to facial stimuli. To reduce the subjects'
attention to their facial muscles, they were told
a cover-story that the electrodes were used to
measure sweat gland activity (e.g., Dimberg,
1982,1990a). To mask the purpose of the emo-
tional experience questionnaire, the subjects
were told that: "Since different subjects partic-
ipate at different times they may also differ in
for instance tiredness and mood, and according
to standardized experimental control proce-
dures, they are required to rate their mood on
different scales" (Dimberg, 1988a).
Next the facial electrodes were attached and
the subjects were placed in the sound-attenu-
ated room and told to pay attention to the pic-
tures. Each subject was exposed to one slide of
each facial expression (sadness, anger, fear,
surprise, disgust, happy, and neutral face) ex-
pressed by different persons. Each subject saw
different combinations of stimulus persons dis-
playing the different emotional expressions.
Because of the emotional quality of the stimuli,
the order of presentation was counterbalanced
among subjects. Each slide was exposed during
8 s in six adjacent trials with an inter-trial inter-
val varying between 25 to 45 s. Immediately af-
ter the sixth (last) presentation of each stimu-
lus type, subjects were asked to rate their emo-
tional experience on the DES questionnaire.
At the end of the experiment, subjects were in-
terviewed to see if the cover story had served
its purpose. No subjects reported that they
were aware that their facial muscle activity had
been recorded or that the real purpose of the
questionnaire was to measure their emotional
experience to the different stimuli.
Design and statistical analysis
Before analysis, the facial EMG data were col-
lapsed over trials within each stimulus type.
The rating data were first range corrected
(Lykken, Rose, Luther, & Maley, 1966) and
then square-root transformed (Kirk, 1968).
The design was a 2 x 7 split-plot factorial
(Kirk, 1968), with SEX OF SUBJECT (male vs. fe-
i
206 L.-O. LUNDQVIST A N D U. D I M B E R G

male) as the between subject factor and STIMU-

LUS (sad, angry, fearful, surprise, disgust, hap-
py, and neutral faces) as the within subject fac-
tor. The statistical analyses were separately
conducted on the facial EMG data and the
emotion experience data by MANOVAs with
Pillai-Bartlett V as test statistic (Olson, 1976).
The MANOVAs were followed up by separate 4.05
ANOVAs for each muscle and each rating di- SAD ANGRY FU\I(NL SURPRISED DISMEITm HAPPY NEUTRAL

mension. The Geisser-Greenhouse correction Figure 1 The mean M. zygomaticus major EMG response
for degrees of freedom was adopted to all to stimuli of facial expressions
ANOVAs (Kirk, 1968). Comparisons among
means were performed with Dunnett's t-test
(Kirk, 1968), by comparing the response to the
different stimuli to the response to the neutral
face.

Results " 4.00 1 S M A N W FEARNL S ~ E O M S O U S T E D HAPPY NEWRAi

.-
.. Facial EMG Figure 2 The mean M-levator labii EMG response to
stimuli of faciai expressions
The MANOVA on facial EMG data revealed
a significant effect of stimulus (V = .4086,
02 -
F(24,1296) = 6.14, P < 0.0001). This result indi-
V)
cates that the stimuli evoked different facial t 0.15-
Z
EMG response patterns. No significant effects =, -
4 0.1 -
of SEX OF SUB JE^ or interaction between SEX OF
SUBJECT and STIMULUS was obtained.The s ~ m u -
u
n o.os -
LUS effect was examined further by separate 0
ANOVAs on each facial muscle. As can be W O-

seen in Table 1,the STIMULUS effect was signif- 4-05 -

icant for all facial muscles. SAIJ ANGRY MRFIK SURPRISEO DISGWiEO HAPPY NEUTRAL

As shown in Figure 1, happy faces evoked F i p 3 The mean frontai M. lateralis EMG response to
the largest M. zygomaticus major EMG re- of facia' expressions
sponse.
As revealed by Dunnett's t-test, happy faces ator labii muscle region (see Figure 2) revealed
were the only stimuli that evoked a signifkant- that faces expressing disgust evoked signifi-
ly larger M. zygomaticus major EMG response cantly larger EMG responses compared with
compared with neutral faces (see Table 2). neutral faces (see Table 2). Unexpectedly, and
Inspection of the responses from the M. lev- as shown in Figure 2 and Table 2, happy faces
also elicited significantly larger
Table 1 F-ratios for STMULUS effect on facial EMG data, responses than neutral faces.
The mean frontal M. lateralis
Facial muscles df MS F E
EMG response is given in Figure
M. zygomaticus major 6 .525833 7.92*** 3. Table 2 indicates that faces ex-
error 330 .O66395 .4973 pressing surpxise evoked signifi-
M. levator labii 6 .O80107 7.11***
error 330 .O11262 .7309
cantly larger responses than neu-
Frontal M. lateralis 6 287178 6.75*** tral faces.
error 330 .O42521 .5123 As shown in Figure 4, faces ex-
M. corrugator supercilii 6 .258439 10.23*** pressing sadness, anger, and fear
error 330 .O25254 .4517 evoked an increased M. corruga-
*** P < 0.001 tor supercilu EMG response.
Note. P-values are Geisser-Greenhouse corrected. However, as indicated by
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAGIOUS

Figure 4 The mean M.corrugator supercilii EMG re-

sp'onse to stimuli of facial expressions.

Dunnett's t-tests given in Table 2, only sad and

angry faces evoked significantly larger EMG
responses compared to neutral faces. Happy
faces evoked a significantly decreased M. cor-
rugator supercilii EMG response when com-
pared to neutral faces.
Thus, all stimuli, except faces expressing
fear, evoked facial EMG response patterns
that were significantly different from those
elicited by neutral faces in at least one facial
muscle.

Emotional experience
The MANOVA on ratings of self-experienced
emotions revealed a significant effect of STIMU-
LUS (V = .5423, approximate F(36,1944) = 5.37,
P < 0.0001). This result indicates that the stim-
uli elicited different emotional experiences. No
significant main effect of SEX OF SUBJECT or in-
teraction between SEX OF SUBJECT and snMuLus
was revealed. Given these results, the STIMULUS
effect was subjected to ANOVAs on each rat-
ing dimension separately. As indicated in Table
3, all rating dimensions with the exception of
surprise showed a significant effect of STIMU-
LUS.
The means of emotion experience ratings to
the different stimuli are given in Table 4.
Dunnett's t-test, given in Table 2, revealed
that all stimuli evoked a significantly increased
experience of the same emotion as expressed
by the stimulus persons; the only exception be-
ing the faces expressing surprise. That is, sad
faces evoked a signiicantly larger experience
of sadness than neutral faces, and angry faces
evoked a significantly larger experience of an-
ger compared with neutral faces. Furthermore,
fearful faces evoked a larger experience of fear
and facial expressions showing disgust elicited
a larger experjence of disgust than neutral fac-
208 L.-O. L U N D Q V I S T AND U . D I M B E R G

es. Finally, happy faces evoked an increased py faces. To more specifically cornpare the pre-
experience of happiness than neutral faces. sent EMG data with the results revealed from
As was further revealed by Dunnett's t-test the study by Dimberg and Lundqvist (1990), a
(see Table 2) stimuli of disgust, angry, and separate analysis of variance was performed on
fearful faces evoked additional emotional ex- the EMG data of the M. corrugator supercilii
periences. That is, angry faces evoked an in- and M. zygomaticus major muscle activities to
creased experience of fear and disgust; fearful stimuli of angry and happy facial expressions.
faces elicited an increased experience of dis- Although the present results were not as clear
gust, and facial expressions of disgust evoked as earlier findings, they do agree with the ear-
larger experience of anger. Sad faces elicited a lier results in some respects. That is, there was
decreased experience of happiness. a tendency for females to respond with more
intense-facialEMG activity to happy and angry
Gender difSerences in facial EMG faces. However, while there were no overall
As revealed by the MANOVA of the facial significant effects, an a priori t-test did reveal
EMG data, no significant main effect of SEX OF that females responded with more increased
SUBJECT or interaction effect of the SEX OF SUB- M. zygomaticus major activity to happy faces
JECT and STMULUS was obtained. However, as than males (t(54) = 1.85, P < .OS).
was mentioned in the introduction, earlier re-
search (Dimberg & Lundqvist, 1990) has
shown that females were more facially expres- Discussion
sive than males when they were exposed to an-
gry and happy faces while their M. corrugator The present findings demonstrate that differ-
supercilii and M. zygomaticus major muscle ac- ent stimuli of facial expressions of emotion
tivity was measured. This was particularly true spontaneously elicited different facial EMG
for the M. zygomaticus major response to hap- reactions, as we11 as different emotional expe-
riences.
Table 3 F-ratios for STIMULUS effect on ratings of emo- Consistent with the hypothesis of emotional
tional experience. contagion (Hatfield et al., 1992) and earlier re-
Rating dimensions df MS F E
search on facial EMG (Dimberg, 1982,1988a,
1990a, 1991,1993; Dimberg & Christmanson,
Sadness 6 1991; Dimberg & Lundqvist, 1990; Lundqvist,
error 330
Anger 6 in press; McHugo, Lanzetta, Sullivan,Masters,
error 330 & Englis, 1985), happy faces evoked a signifi-
Fear 6 cant increase in M. zygomaticus major muscle
error 330 activity, whereas angry faces evoked a signifi-
Surprise 6
error 330 cant increase in M. corrugator supercilii mus-
Disgust 6 cle activity. In the present study, however, the
error 330 ,1112 .g378 reactions from the M. corrugator supercilii
Happiness 6 .8196 7.18*** muscle to faces expressing fear did not reach
error 330 .l141
statistical sienificance. As further oredicted
*** P < 0.001 and consistent with earlier findings (Lund-
Note. P-values are Geisser-Greenhouse corrected. qvist, in press), sad faces evoked significantly
Table 4 Mean ratings* (0-1) of emotional experience to facial expressions.
Stimuli Emotional experience
Sadness Anger Fear Surprise Disgust Happiness
Sad .754 .393 .398 .413 .414
Angry .397 S82 .532 .371 .455
Fear .443 .382 .513 .453 .446
Surprise .329 .278 .315 .444 .239
Disgust .390 .488 .441 .356 .545
Happy .298 .283 .211 .299 .248
Neutral .441 .237 .335 .322 .249
* Ratings are range corrected and square root transformed
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE CONTAGIOUS
larger reactions rom the M. corrugator super-
cilii muscle region, and faces expressing sur-
prise evoked significantly larger reactions from
the frontal M. lateralis region. Moreover, faces
expressing disgust evoked increased reactions
in t h e M. levator labii muscle region. Finally,
consistent with earlier results for happy faces
(Dimberg, 1988a) and with the hypothesis of
emotional contagion, stimuli of sad, angry,
fearful, disgust, and happy facial expressions
evoked emotional experiences that were iden-
tical with the emotions expressed by the stirn-
ulus persons. Contrary to predicti~ns,no over-
ail gender differences in facial EMG or emo-
tional experience were found. Consistent with
earlier research (Dimberg & Lundqvist, 1990)
however, females tended to respond with larg-
er M. zygomaticus major EMG responses to
happy faces.
In summary, the present results demonstrate
that, to a certain extent, subjects both mim-
icked and experienced the same emotion ex-
pressed by the stimulus persons. So far the pre-
sent data support the hypothesis that facial ex-
pressions are contagious.
There were also results from the present
study that were inconsistent with the hypothesis
of emotional contagion. For instance, stimuli of
faces expressing surprise did not evoke an in-
creased experience of surprise emotion.The re-
sults also revealed response patterns that were
not interpretable in terms of emotional conta-
gion. For instance, happy faces evoked sig&-
cantly larger M. levator labii reactions. This was
expected only for faces expressing disgust. This
result, which was also foumd by Lundqvist (in
press), suggests cross-talk between the M. zygo-
maticus major and the M. levator labii muscles.
This explanation is supported by the finding
that the activity from the two muscle regions
correlated significantly (rxy= .67,P < .001), and
is further emphasized by the finding that happy
faces did not evoke an experience of disgust.
Furthermore, in addition to the experience
of anger, angry faces evoked an increased ex-
perience of disgust and, as found in earlier
studies (Dimberg, 1988a; McHugo et al.,
1985), an increased experience of fear. More-
over, faces expressing fear evoked an in-
creased experience of disgust in addition to
fear; faces expressing disgust evoked anger in
addition to the experience of disgust. Thus, the
results indicate that subjects experienced other
emotions in addition to the expected "conta-
209
gious" emotions. This can be explained as an
effect of emotional clustering and that pure
emotional states are difficult to induce in the
laboratory (Polivy, 1981). It is also possible
that discrete emotions may not be experienced
long enough to be reported separately, or that
one emotion may trigger others (Izard, 1972,
1977). In this sense the obtained blended emo-
tional experiences in the present experiment
are not necessarily inconsistent with the hy-
pothesis of emotional contagion.
On the other hand, some of the present re-
sults concerning facial EMG and self-experi-
ence of emotion may be explained in terms of
other processes working in parallel with emo-
tional contagion. For instance, earlier research
has demonstrated that facial EMG more gen-
eraliy reflects emotional activity (Cacioppo &
Petty, 1981; Dimberg, 1990a; Schwartz, Fair,
Salt, Mandel, & Klerman, 1976). In particular,
it has been found that not only facial stimuli
but also other negative and positive stimuli,
such as pictures of snakes and flowers (Dim-
berg, 1986, 1990a; Dimberg & Thell, 1988),
and auditory stimuli (Dimberg, 1990b, 1990c)
evoke facial reactions that reflect the emotion-
al quality of the stimuli. Thus, one interpreta-
tion of the present results may be that the facial
reactions to, for example, the angry faces do
not reflect emotional contagion but rather a
negative emotional reaction,such as fear. This
interpretation is further supported by the rat-
ing data, which show that subjects also experi-
ence more fear after exposure to angry faces.
These results are consistent with the results
from earlier studies in which subiects experi-
enced more fear after they were exposed t6 an-
gry faces (Dimberg, 1987, 1988a). This is fur-
ther consistent with the hypothesis that human
subjects are biologically predisposed both to
react to and to associate angry faces with fear
(Dimberg, 1983,1987,1988a, 1988b).
It is interesting to note that the mere expo-
sure of pictures of facial stimuli is sufficient to
evoke responses interpretable as emotional
contagion. This may be taken as support for
the proposition that emotional contagion can
occur automatically (Hatfield et al., 1992).The
automatic charactrSofemotional responding
to facial stimuli is emphasized by the fact that
subjects exposed to stimuli of facial expres-
sions respond with differentiated facial EMG
reactions as early as a few hundred ms of ex-
posure (Dimberg, 1991,1995).
210
It is important to note that even if major as-
pects of the present data are interpretable as
an outcome of emotional contagion, the pre-
sent study was not designed to explain the un-
derlying mechanisms that are involved in the
occurrence of emotional contagion. For in-
stance, one interpretation of the present re-
sults is that subjects first rnirnic the facial stim-
uli. Thereafter, these facial muscle activities,
consistent with the facial feedback hypothesis
(e. g., Buck, 1980), give rise to the experience
of emotion. This interpretation is consistent
with the study by Levenson, Ekman, and Frie-
sen (1990), who demonstrated that merely pos-
ing expressions of emotion induced a corre-
sponding experience of emotion. A second in-
terpretation of the present results is that the
subjects first experienced the emotion similar
to the stimuli to which they were exposed.
Their facial reactions then were an effect of the
facial muscles functioning as an emotional
readloutput system. Thus, it is not possible to
decide whether the contagious effect in the
present study is an outcome of mimicking be-
havior or if the effects initially are mediated by
an experience of an emotion.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by grants from the
Swedish Council for Research in the Humani-
ties and Social Sciences. Three anonyrnous re-
viewers are thanked for their cornrnents on an
earlier version of this paper.
Address correspondence to:
Ulf Dimberg or Lars-Olov Lundqvist
Department of Psychology
Uppsala University
Box 1854
S-751 48 Uppsala
Sweden
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