TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mitschke, Vanessa
A1  - Eder, Andreas B.
T1  - Facing the enemy: Spontaneous facial reactions towards suffering opponents
JF  - Psychophysiology
N2  - The suffering of an opponent is an important social affective cue that modulates how aggressive interactions progress. To investigate the affective consequences of opponent suffering on a revenge seeking individual, two experiments (total N = 82) recorded facial muscle activity while participants observed the reaction of a provoking opponent to a (retaliatory) sound punishment in a laboratory aggression task. Opponents reacted via prerecorded videos either with facial displays of pain, sadness, or neutrality. Results indicate that participants enjoyed seeing the provocateur suffer: indexed by a coordinated muscle response featuring an increase in zygomaticus major (and orbicularis oculi muscle) activation accompanied by a decrease in corrugator supercilii activation. This positive facial reaction was only shown while a provoking opponent expressed pain. Expressions of sadness, and administration of sound blasts to nonprovoking opponents, did not modulate facial activity. Overall, the results suggest that revenge-seeking individuals enjoy observing the offender suffer, which could represent schadenfreude or satisfaction of having succeeded in the retaliation goal.
KW  - suffering
KW  - facial electromyography
KW  - facial expression
KW  - reactive aggression
KW  - revenge
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259672
VL  - 58
IS  - 8
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Weiß, Martin
A1  - Hein, Grit
A1  - Hewig, Johannes
T1  - Between joy and sympathy: Smiling and sad recipient faces increase prosocial behavior in the dictator game
JF  - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
N2  - In human interactions, the facial expression of a bargaining partner may contain relevant information that affects prosocial decisions. We were interested in whether facial expressions of the recipient in the dictator game influence dictators´ ehavior. To test this, we conducted an online study (n = 106) based on a modified version of a dictator game. The dictators allocated money between themselves and another person (recipient), who had no possibility to respond to the dictator.
Importantly, before the allocation decision, the dictator was presented with the facial expression of the recipient (angry, disgusted, sad, smiling, or neutral). The results showed that dictators sent more money to recipients with sad or smiling facial expressions and less to recipients with angry or disgusted facial expressions compared with a neutral facial expression. Moreover, based on the sequential analysis of the decision and the interaction partner in the preceding trial, we found that decision-making depends upon previous interactions.
KW  - emotional influence
KW  - dictator game
KW  - facial expression
KW  - social decision-making
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-241106
VL  - 18
IS  - 11
ER  -