The Impact of Experience on Affective Responses during Action Observation

Perceiving others in action elicits affective and aesthetic responses in observers. The present study investigates the extent to which these responses relate to an observer's general experience with observed movements. Facial electromyographic (EMG) responses were recorded in experienced dancer...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-05, Vol.11 (5), p.e0154681-e0154681
Main Authors: Kirsch, Louise P, Snagg, Arielle, Heerey, Erin, Cross, Emily S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aesthetics
Affect
Analysis
Biology and Life Sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Dance
Electromyography
Engineering and Technology
Facial Muscles - physiology
Female
Humans
Jola
Judgments
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Muscle contraction
Muscles
Neuroimaging
Observers
Photic Stimulation
Research and Analysis Methods
Social Sciences
Studies
Young Adult
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Summary:Perceiving others in action elicits affective and aesthetic responses in observers. The present study investigates the extent to which these responses relate to an observer's general experience with observed movements. Facial electromyographic (EMG) responses were recorded in experienced dancers and non-dancers as they watched short videos of movements performed by professional ballet dancers. Responses were recorded from the corrugator supercilii (CS) and zygomaticus major (ZM) muscles, both of which show engagement during the observation of affect-evoking stimuli. In the first part of the experiment, participants passively watched the videos while EMG data were recorded. In the second part, they explicitly rated how much they liked each movement. Results revealed a relationship between explicit affective judgments of the movements and facial muscle activation only among those participants who were experienced with the movements. Specifically, CS activity was higher for disliked movements and ZM activity was higher for liked movements among dancers but not among non-dancers. The relationship between explicit liking ratings and EMG data in experienced observers suggests that facial muscles subtly echo affective judgments even when viewing actions that are not intentionally emotional in nature, thus underscoring the potential of EMG as a method to examine subtle shifts in implicit affective responses during action observation.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0154681