ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Pupil mimicry promotes trust through the theory-of-mind network.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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30 citing papers in PubMed, 94 citations in OpenAlex.
- Fixations, blinks, and pupils differentially capture individual and interpersonal dynamics in role-asymmetric mutual gaze interaction.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Automatic neural mechanisms of social synchrony: pupil and Blink responses in adults with ADHD symptoms.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2025Article
- Reciprocity evolves more readily in competitive than cooperative socio-ecologies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Neural synchronization and its impact on intergroup attitudes in dynamic interactions.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Modeling trust and its dynamics from physiological signals and embedded measures for operational human-autonomy teaming.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Article
- Pupil contagion variation with gaze, arousal, and autistic traits.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The bigger your pupils, the better my comprehension: an ERP study of how pupil size and gaze of the speaker affect syntactic processing.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- The other-race effect of pupil contagion in infancy.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Characterization of implicit and explicit mind-reading in children with autism based on eye movements.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Interpersonal eye-tracking reveals the dynamics of interacting minds.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Review
- No transfer of arousal from other's eyes in Williams syndrome.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- How video calls affect mimicry and trust during interactions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Gender Differences among Healthcare Providers in the Promotion of Patient-, Person- and Family-Centered Care-And Its Implications for Providing Quality Healthcare.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Behavioral and neuro-cognitive bases for emergence of norms and socially shared realities via dynamic interaction.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Conscious awareness is necessary to assess trust and mimic facial expressions, while pupils impact trust unconsciously.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Physiological synchrony is associated with attraction in a blind date setting.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- Eye contact marks the rise and fall of shared attention in conversation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The effect of anime character's facial expressions and eye blinking on donation behavior.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Pupil dilation reflects the authenticity of received nonverbal vocalizations.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Human and Human-Interfaced AI Interactions: Modulation of Human Male Autonomic Nervous System via Pupil Mimicry.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The human eye can provide powerful insights into the emotions and intentions of others; however, how pupillary changes influence observers' behavior remains largely unknown. The present fMRI-pupillometry study revealed that when the pupils of interacting partners synchronously dilate, trust is promoted, which suggests that pupil mimicry affiliates people. Here we provide evidence that pupil mimicry modulates trust decisions through the activation of the theory-of-mind network (precuneus, temporo-parietal junction, superior temporal sulcus, and medial prefrontal cortex). This network was recruited during pupil-dilation mimicry compared with interactions without mimicry or compared with pupil-constriction mimicry. Furthermore, the level of theory-of-mind engagement was proportional to individual's susceptibility to pupil-dilation mimicry. These data reveal a fundamental mechanism by which an individual's pupils trigger neurophysiological responses within an observer: when interacting partners synchronously dilate their pupils, humans come to feel reflections of the inner states of others, which fosters trust formation.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.