Date Thesis Awarded
5-2015
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Science (BS)
Department
Psychology
Advisor
Joanna Schug
Committee Members
Pamela Hunt
Jacqueline Rodriguez
Abstract
Facial mimicry has been considered an automatic, spontaneous process. However, recent research suggests that facial mimicry is dependent on the context of the social interaction, with increased mimicry occurring when the understanding of another’s emotional states is important. In this study, we examined the social context of facial mimicry of positive and negative facial expressions of emotion, and how mimicry relates to common variants in the serotonin transporter genotype 5-HTTLPR, which has been found to relate to proneness to negativity and to social sensitivity. Overall, the results of this study indicate that the negativity associated with a particular 5-HTTLPR genotype may be due to decreased processing of positive emotion rather than increased processing of negative emotion.
Recommended Citation
Merians, Addie N., "The association between 5-HTTLPR and spontaneous facial mimicry: An investigation using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 223.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/223
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
