{"id":218612,"date":"2025-07-24T04:21:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T09:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/electrical-stimulation-of-facial-muscles-influences-how-people-perceive-others-emotions-study-finds"},"modified":"2025-07-24T04:21:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T09:21:55","slug":"electrical-stimulation-of-facial-muscles-influences-how-people-perceive-others-emotions-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/electrical-stimulation-of-facial-muscles-influences-how-people-perceive-others-emotions-study-finds","title":{"rendered":"Electrical stimulation of facial muscles influences how people perceive others\u2019 emotions, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/electrical-stimulation-of-facial-muscles-influences-how-people-perceive-others-emotions-study-finds.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Psychology research suggests that the human body, particularly the muscles on our face, plays a key part in the processing of others\u2019 emotions. For instance, past findings suggest that when we see another person smiling or frowning, we often unconsciously mimic their facial expression, and this helps us interpret their emotions.<\/p>\n<p>Theories suggest that the mimicry of facial expressions sends signals from our facial muscles to the brain, broadly referred to as \u201cfacial feedback,\u201d which in turn contributes to the interpretation of other people\u2019s emotions. So far, however, the contribution of this feedback to emotion recognition and how its contribution unfolds over time remain poorly understood.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Essex recently carried out a study to investigate the effects of facial feedback on the perception of emotions at different stages of visual processing, using a technique known as facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES). Their findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s44271-025-00281-y\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Communications Psychology<\/i>, suggest that signals generated by the movements of muscles on people\u2019s faces influence how they interpret the emotions of others, particularly during the earlier stages of visual processing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psychology research suggests that the human body, particularly the muscles on our face, plays a key part in the processing of others\u2019 emotions. For instance, past findings suggest that when we see another person smiling or frowning, we often unconsciously mimic their facial expression, and this helps us interpret their emotions. Theories suggest that the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}