Kuang Beibei, Peng Shenli, Wu Yuhang, Chen Ying, Hu Ping
College of International Relations, National University of Defense Technology, Nanjing 210039, China.
Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
Brain Sci. 2023 Dec 25;14(1):25. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14010025.
Emotional mimicry plays a vital role in understanding others' emotions and has been found to be modulated by social contexts, especially group membership. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this modulation remain unclear. We explored whether and how group membership modulated emotional mimicry using a multimodal method combining facial electromyography (fEMG) and electroencephalography (EEG). We instructed participants to passively view dynamic emotional faces (happy vs. angry) of others (in-group vs. out-group) and simultaneously recorded their fEMG and EEG responses. Then, we conducted combined analyses of fEMG-EEG by splitting the EEG trials into two mimicry intensity categories (high-intensity mimicry vs. low-intensity mimicry) according to fEMG activity. The fEMG results confirmed the occurrence of emotional mimicry in the present study but failed to find a group membership effect. However, the EEG results showed that participants mimicked in-group happiness and anger more than out-group. Importantly, this in-group preference involved different neural mechanisms in happiness and anger mimicry. In-group preference for happiness mimicry occurred at multiple neural mechanisms such as N1 (at P7, Pz, and P8), P2 (at Pz and P8), N2 (at P8), and P3 (at P7, Pz, and P8); in-group preference for anger mimicry occurred at P1 (at P7) and P2 (at Pz). Our findings provide new neural evidence for the effect of group membership on emotional mimicry by uncovering the temporal dynamics of this effect.
情绪模仿在理解他人情绪方面起着至关重要的作用，并且已发现它会受到社会情境的调节，尤其是群体成员身份的影响。然而，这种调节背后的神经机制仍不清楚。我们使用结合面部肌电图（fEMG）和脑电图（EEG）的多模态方法，探究了群体成员身份是否以及如何调节情绪模仿。我们指示参与者被动观看他人（内群体与外群体）的动态情绪面孔（开心与愤怒），并同时记录他们的fEMG和EEG反应。然后，我们根据fEMG活动将EEG试验分为两种模仿强度类别（高强度模仿与低强度模仿），对fEMG - EEG进行联合分析。fEMG结果证实了本研究中情绪模仿的发生，但未发现群体成员身份效应。然而，EEG结果表明，参与者对内群体的开心和愤怒的模仿多于外群体。重要的是，这种内群体偏好在开心和愤怒模仿中涉及不同的神经机制。对内群体开心模仿的偏好发生在多个神经机制上，如N1（在P7、Pz和P8处）、P2（在Pz和P8处）、N2（在P8处）和P3（在P7、Pz和P8处）；对内群体愤怒模仿的偏好发生在P1（在P7处）和P2（在Pz处）。我们的研究结果通过揭示这种效应的时间动态，为群体成员身份对情绪模仿的影响提供了新的神经证据。
