Facial Expressions in Empathy Research

Abstract

Whether in the shape of real-life photographs, symbol-like drawings, or even avatar creations, research has been interested in the way a human face expresses and thereby transports a multitude of personal emotional states for decades. Starting with the early works of Darwin, moving on to large stimulus batteries such as Ekman and Friesen’s facial expression battery in the early 1970 s, faces in all kinds and shapes have been well-studied regarding various kinds of responses they elicit in someone perceiving a certain facial expression. Without a doubt, static displays of emotion capture an essential share of what is going on when our brains process facial expression. This has given rise to many powerful applications in modern life such as facial symbols in text and email messages, or eyes preventing costumers from shop lifting. However, calls for ecological validity together with the advancements in methods available for testing and recording human physiological responses have supported a more dynamic display of emotions. They exist as short morphing facial expressions of a few seconds or short video clips depicting actors with emotional and/or neutral facial expressions. These methods enable a deeper understanding of the temporal dynamics in facial processing and against the background of impaired facial emotion perception open the way for the investigation of possible differential impairments in patients. Recently, we have moved this a step further toward including facial expressions in naturalistic displays of emotionality in which spoken speech content and prosody added to a multimodal perception and processing of emotions. Together with a summary of the history of using facial expressions in empathy research as well as how dynamic stimuli contribute to an advancement in understanding the dynamics of facial expressions will be outlined in this chapter.