ArticleScientific reports2019
Affiliative zygomatic synchrony in co-present strangers.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interpersonal Synchronization of Autonomic Physiology via Mere Visual Contact.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- TraceLAB: A MATLAB Toolbox for Interindividual Synchrony Analysis of Facial Expression and Head Movement Data Acquired via Trace.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Cardiac synchrony, peer relationships, and affective experiences in children during group interactions.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Facial mimicry predicts preference.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Girls with higher levels of suicidal ideation experienced less parental reciprocity of eye-contact and positive facial affect during conflictual interactions: A pilot study.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Aligning the smiles of dating dyads causally increases attraction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Social bonding through shared experiences: the role of emotional intensity.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Inter-subject correlation of audience facial expressions predicts audience engagement during theatrical performances.iScience · 2024Article
- Smiling synchronization predicts interaction enjoyment in peer dyads of autistic and neurotypical youth.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
- High depressive symptomatology reduces emotional reactions to pictures of social interaction.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Py-Feat: Python Facial Expression Analysis Toolbox.Affective science · 2023Article
- Empathy Modulates the Activity of the Sensorimotor Mirror Neuron System during Pain Observation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Article
- Unraveling dyadic psycho-physiology of social presence between strangers during an audio drama - a signal-analysis approach.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Interpersonal Physiological Synchrony Predicts Group Cohesion.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Effects of social and emotional context on neural activation and synchrony during movie viewing.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Group-level physiological synchrony and individual-level anxiety predict positive affective behaviors during a group decision-making task.Psychophysiology · 2021Article
- Pictures of social interaction prompt a sustained increase of the smile expression and induce sociability.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- An Exploratory Study of Physiological Linkage Among Strangers.Frontiers in neuroergonomics · 2021Article
- An Android for Emotional Interaction: Spatiotemporal Validation of Its Facial Expressions.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In social contexts individuals frequently act as social chameleons, synchronizing their responses with those of others. Such synchrony is believed to play an important role, promoting mutual emotional and social states. However, synchrony in facial signals, which serve as the main communicative channel between people, has not been systematically studied. To address this gap, we investigated the social spread of smiling dynamics in a naturalistic social setting and assessed its affiliative function. We also studied whether smiling synchrony between people is linked with convergence in their autonomic and emotional responses. To that aim we measured moment-by-moment changes in zygomatic electromyography and cardiovascular activity in dyads of previously unacquainted participants, who co-viewed and subsequently rated emotional movies. We found a robust, dyad-specific zygomatic synchrony in co-viewing participants. During the positive movie, such zygomatic synchrony co-varied with cardiovascular synchrony and with convergence in positive feelings. No such links were found for the negative movie. Centrally, zygomatic synchrony in both emotional contexts predicted the subsequently reported affiliative feelings of dyad members. These results demonstrate that a naturally unfolding smiling behavior is highly contagious. They further suggest that zygomatic synchrony functions as a social facilitator, eliciting affiliation towards previously unknown others.
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