Mimicking expressions is a phylogenetically ancient and basic form of intraspecies communication (Brothers, 1990); it may have been evolutionarily adaptive because it helped humans communicate and foster relationships (Lakin, Jefferis, Cheng, & Chartrand, 2003). When an observer matches the facial expression of another, emotion-related thoughts and feelings may be modulated or initiated in the ...

Research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that facial mimicry plays a causal role in understanding facial expression of emotion. Accurate understanding of facial emotion, in turn, grounds emotional development. Are pacifiers, which disrupt facial mimicry in the user, associated with compromised emotional development? We examined facial mimicry in children and found that duration of pacif...

Cryptic species have evolved camouflage, which enhances survival by decreasing their visibility and thus protecting them from would-be predators. Conversely, aposematic species have evolved vibrant colors which enhance visibility. These warning signals work by helping unpalatable, toxic, evasive, or stinging prey stand out from more favorable prey. Thus, predators learn to generalize the appear...

According to embodied simulation theory, understanding other people's emotions is fostered by facial mimicry. However, studies assessing the effect of facial mimicry on the recognition of emotion are still controversial. In Parkinson's disease (PD), one of the most distinctive clinical features is facial amimia, a reduction in facial expressiveness, but patients also show emotional disturbances...

Emotional mimicry and empathy are mechanisms underlying social interaction. Benzodiazepines have been proposed to inhibit empathy and promote antisocial behaviour. First, we aimed to investigate the effects of oxazepam on emotional mimicry and empathy for pain, and second, we aimed to investigate the association of personality traits to emotional mimicry and empathy. Participants (n=76) were ra...

Coevolutionary arms races are a potent force in evolution, and brood parasite-host dynamics provide classical examples. Different host-races of the common cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, lay eggs in the nests of other species, leaving all parental care to hosts. Cuckoo eggs often (but not always) appear to match remarkably the color and pattern of host eggs, thus reducing detection by hosts. However, ...

Recent studies have delineated a large Nearctic Müllerian mimicry complex in Dasymutilla velvet ants. Psorthaspis spider wasps live in areas where this mimicry complex is found and are phenotypically similar to Dasymutilla. We tested the idea that Psorthaspis spider wasps are participating in the Dasymutilla mimicry complex and that they codiverged with Dasymutilla. We performed morphometric an...

Mutualism between plants and the ants that defend them from herbivory is a well-known phenomenon. Because of ant aggression, ant mimicry as a defense against predation is very common in the animal kingdom, and has already been suggested as a type of visual anti-herbivory defensive coloration in leaves and stems of several plant species. Many Passiflora species have dark dots and short stripes o...

Deficits in facial mimicry have been widely reported in autism. Some studies have suggested that these deficits are restricted to spontaneous mimicry and do not extend to volitional mimicry. We bridge these apparently inconsistent observations by testing the impact of reward value on neural indices of mimicry and how autistic traits modulate this impact. Neutral faces were conditioned with high...