The Interplay Between Mimicry and Social Context in Facial Expression Perception

According to existing theoretical accounts, the perception of emotional expressions relies both on automatic and controlled processes. A growing amount of research suggests that those processes are non-independent. Whilst facial mimicry is considered to be an automatic process, its occurrence also depends on the social setting. For example, people show a stronger tendency to mimic ingroup members, people with higher social rank and those who are physically similar to them. On the other hand, recent studies suggest that restricting facial mimicry increases observer’s reliance on their conceptual knowledge when judging facial expressions. The aim of this chapter is to provide a review of the literature in terms of how facial mimicry and social context interact in emotion processing. To that end, we will also discuss the potential implications of existing findings and outline how those could be developed in future research.