Empathy: A facial electromyographic study

Facial electromyography (EMG) was employed as an indicator of the presence and direction of empathic emotion. Forty-two undergraduates (30 women, 12 men) were preselected on the basis of extreme scores on the Mehrabian and Epstein (1972) Measure of Emotional Empathy (MEE). Subjects viewed an affectively-neutral videotaped segment from an old movie, followed by videotaped segments of a confederate ostensibly reminiscing in separate scenes about happy and sad events in her life. Half of the subjects viewed the happy scene before the sad; the other half viewed the sad scene before the happy. Subjects were divided randomly into two observational set groups of equal size. In the scrutinizing condition, subjects were instructed to concentrate on the details of the confederate's behavior. In the natural condition, they were instructed to watch as if they were at home watching television or at the movies. EMG was recorded at brow (corrugator supercilii) and cheek (zygomaticus major) muscle sites and from both forearms. Subjective reports concerning the confederate's emotion, self-emotion, and modes of watching the confederate were obtained.; There was a significant difference between subjects based on empathy group. Subjects with high scores on the MEE showed facial activity (EMG), relative to the neutral segment measurement, matching the emotion expressed by the confederate, while those with low scores did not. Subjects who scrutinized tended to have less matching facial activity than those who watched naturally. This difference was of borderline significance. Verbal reports indicated that subjects generally experienced emotion congruent with the emotion of the confederate. Verbal reports also indicated that in response to the sad scene subjects with high scores on the MEE experienced emotion significantly more congruent with the confederate's emotion than did subjects with low scores. The overall pattern of findings supports the validity of facial EMG as a measure of empathic emotion. The findings also point to the importance of considering both affective and cognitive factors in empathy research.