Throughout development, children rely heavily on social referencing to help them make difficult choices and to regulate their emotions and behavior. The expressions and facial mimicry of parents,...Show moreThroughout development, children rely heavily on social referencing to help them make difficult choices and to regulate their emotions and behavior. The expressions and facial mimicry of parents, teachers and other adults who are part of a child’s life play a large role in this process. Although it was first believed that this mechanism was just another part of motor mimicry, results of previous studies tell us otherwise. It appears that expressions and mimicry are strongly influenced by context, such as likeability, bias, and similarity. Based on this knowledge, the current study looked at the effect of externalizing behavior and gender of a child on the automatic facial responses of adults and took a possible moderating effect of an existing gender bias into account. The sample consisted of 25 participants who completed two EMG tasks to measure facial mimicry and the IAT to measure gender bias. Results show that there appears to be a difference in mimicry when looking at happy boys. Participants frown more towards happy externalizing boys than towards happy internalizing boys, a possible sign of disapproval. Bias also appeared to have an effect. Only participants with a lower bias score showed the aforementioned behavior towards happy boys, possibly because of the influence of expectations and empathy. The results show us that a small amount of information can influence the way adults behave towards children, even if the viewer is not familiar with the child.Show less
