Unfolding political attitudes through the face: facial expressions when reading emotion language of left- and right-wing political leaders.

ABSTRACT: Spontaneous emotionally congruent facial responses (ECFR) to others' emotional expressions can occur by simply observing others' faces (i.e., smiling) or by reading emotion related words (i.e., to smile). The goal of the present study was to examine whether language describing political leaders' emotions affects voters by inducing emotionally congruent facial reactions as a function of readers' and politicians' shared political orientation. Participants read sentences describing politicians' emotional expressions, while their facial muscle activation was measured by means of electromyography (EMG). Results showed that reading sentences describing left and right-wing politicians "smiling" or "frowning" elicits ECFR for ingroup but not outgroup members. Remarkably, ECFR were sensitive to att

SUBMITTER: Fino E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6821753 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature