Conscious awareness is necessary to assess trust and mimic facial expressions, while pupils impact trust unconsciously

Electrophysiological concomitants of pupillary synchrony

Pupillary synchrony or contagion is the automatic unconscious mimicry of pupil dilation in dyadic interactions. This experiment explored electrophysiological event-related potential (ERP) concomitants of pupillary synchrony. Artificial pupils (black dots) were superimposed on either partial faces (eyes, nose, brow) or random textures. Observers were asked to judge dot size (large, medium, or small). There was clear evidence of pupillary synchrony with observer pupil dilation greater to large dots than to small or medium dots. The pupillary synchrony increased in magnitude throughout the trial and was found both with faces and with textures. When the stimuli were partial faces with artificial pupils (dots), there was ERP activity related to target dot size in the period at P250 and P3. A face specific N170 was also found. When the stimuli were random textures with dots, there was ERP activity at P1 and in the interval from 140 to 200 ms post-stimulus onset. The use of ERP with pupillometry revealed results for faces that were consistent with a social explanation of pupillary synchrony whereas results for textures were consistent with a local luminance explanation.