Facing emotional politicians: Do emotional displays of politicians evoke mimicry and emotional contagion?

Emotional displays of politicians can be persuasive. According to prominent psychological theories, we can easily “catch” the emotional displays of others through mimicry and emotional contagion. Do these processes work for politicians too, or is it conditional on what voters think of the politician making the display? In a preregistered within-subjects laboratory experiment, participants observed images of neutral and manipulated emotional displays of politicians. We measured emotional mimicry (facial electromyography) and emotional contagion (self-reports). We do not find evidence for the matched motor hypothesis. Our findings are in line with the emotional mimicry in social context model. Namely, we find that the happy displays of in-party politicians elicit congruent facial activity (a positive facial index). Furthermore, the displays of the out-party politicians do not elicit mimicry, but instead our findings suggest a reactive response: Participants smiled in response to angry out-party politicians. The selfreported emotions indicated a small effect of emotional contagion. Taken together, our study provides insights in how voters are emotionally affected by politicians’ emotional displays and highlights that our polarized prior beliefs color our emotional responses to politics.