Is it contagious? An eye-movement and EMG study of smile authenticity judgment

Abstract

A smile is commonly used to mask negative emotions, yet those emotions are often leaked through microexpressions. These microexpressions act as brief displays of the individual’s true emotion. Studies have indicated that participants often have difficulty judging the emotional expressions as truly happy or not truly happy, even when the leaked emotion is displayed for extended periods of time. The current study used a smile authenticity judgment task and sought to understand why individuals have difficulty with these non-authentic smiles (i.e. masking smiles; angry brow, angry mouth, disgust, fear, sad brow, and sad mouth). Various judgment strategies were evaluated, such as explicit knowledge, attentional limitations (eyemovement measures), emotional contagion (scale; ECS), and facial mimicry (electromyography; EMG). Accuracy results were observed to be a function of emotional expressions, where participants are more accurate with masking smiles containing fear and less accurate with masking smiles containing anger in the brows. In addition, judgment strategies appear to be a function of emotion. For instance, emotional contagion and facial mimicry were respectively significant predictors of fear and angry mouth masking smile judgment accuracy. Alternatively, attentional limitations were a significant predictor of angry brow masking smile judgment accuracy. In sum, smile authenticity judgment of masking smiles and their respective strategies appear to be as a function emotion.