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Abstract
Certain forms of empathy, including emotion sharing (i.e. affective empathy), are assumed to be present from birth; however, our present understanding of early empathy development is limited. This thesis makes a substantive contribution to the developmental empathy literature by investigating a physiological response thought to underlie affective empathy responding in early life: rapid facial mimicry (RFM). Measured via facial electromyography, RFM refers the human tendency to mimic facial expressions; activation of cheek muscles when we see someone smile and brow muscles when we see someone frown.
Study 1 investigated if 3-and 7-month-old infants produce RFM to adult happy and angry faces. Seven-month olds mimicked happy faces only, and 3-month olds did not mimic either expression. This finding suggests that RFM is not innate, and experience with facial expressions might be necessary for production of RFM.
Studies 2 to 4 investigated whether RFM is present in the preschool period, and is associated with affective empathy function. Study 2 found preschoolers mimicked adults displaying happy but not angry facial expressions; RFM was not correlated with parent-rated affective empathy. Study 3 used a broader range of facial expression stimuli and found RFM to happy and sad faces depended on stimulus age (child vs adult faces), and RFM to fearful faces depended on participant gender and stimulus age. There was no evidence of RFM to angry faces. Again, a significant RFM-affective empathy correlation was not found. Study 4 found that RFM occurred to dynamic happy, fear and sad adult faces but not to angry faces. Studies 2 to 4 demonstrated that RFM to angry expressions is not present in early development, variables such as stimulus age and dynamicity influence RFM elicitation, and RFM is not associated with affective empathy as it is in adulthood.
Study 5 investigated rapid facial responses to photographs of fear-relevant (e.g. snakes) and fear-irrelevant (e.g. flowers) non-facial stimuli. Preschoolers produced facial responses to fear-irrelevant stimuli only, indicating that young children may not be hardwired to produce rapid facial responses to fear-relevant stimuli.
Together, these studies challenge classic assumptions about the RFM response as a hardwired, reflexive, and biologically predisposed response, and demonstrate that RFM in early development presents differently to RFM in adulthood. Implications for RFM as an affective empathy response are discussed.