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  -