Research on socio-ecological bases of "primitive empathy" and its psychological architecture

人类共情能力研究是包括进化生物学在内的自然科学和人文科学的核心问题，是理解人类社会性的基础问题之一。这个项目关注的是被称为“原始同理心”的基本社会情感过程。这个项目围绕着结对情绪同步的理论构建，并成功地从经验上识别出一种被称为“面部模仿”的现象。这是一种现象，一个人在他/她自己的脸上复制另一个人的面部表情。相关的现象已经观察到母婴互动，但只有零星的研究存在于非亲属成人之间的面部模仿。我们假设面部模仿可以用来理解另一个人的情绪状态。为了验证这一假设，我们进行了一系列心理生理实验，在参与者观看另一个人面部表情的视频片段时，测量他们的面部肌电图（EMG）。结果支持了我们的假设，并表明面部模仿可能是移情的关键心理生理过程。

Research on human ability to empathize with others is a core question encompassing natural sciences including evolutionary biology as well as human sciences, and constitutes one of the fundamental questions to understand human sociality. This project was focused on basic socio-emotional processes called "primitive empathy." This project revolved around theory-building about emotional synchronization within pairs, and has succeeded in empirically identifying a phenomenon called "facial mimicry." This is a phenomenon whereby a person replicates another person's facial expression on his/her own face. Related phenomena have been observed with mother-infant interactions, but only sporadic research exists as to the facial mimicry between non-kin adults. We hypothesized that facial mimicry serves to understand another person's emotional state in general. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a series of psycho-physiological experiments where a participant's facial electromyography (EMG) was measured while they were viewing video-clips about another individual's facial expression. The results supported our hypothesis, and suggested that facial mimicry may be a key psycho-physiological process underlying empathy.