Our aim was to test existing sex and age stereotypes related to emotional expressivity, gender and age. This was a complex analysis of facial expressions of all basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) to everyday life stimuli observing a large sample (2,969 unique participants creating 39,694 recordings) using an Emotion Artificial Intelligence. Our data partially support emotion-specific stereotype that women express more affiliate emotions and men express more dominant emotions except for sadness. There were found correlations of emotion expression with age, however intensity and frequency of emotion expression did not follow the same pattern. Not eliminating the differences between men and women in the baseline facial appearance resulted in men expressing dominant emotions (anger and disgust) more intensively, and women expressing more affiliative emotions (happiness, fear, and surprise). To sum up, facial appearance can be one of the origins of the existing gender stereotypic socialisation stereotype.

Mimicry has been proven to be responsible for many social consequences linked to social bonding: improved trust, liking, and rapport. This accumulating empirical evidence has mostly been based on experimental designs focused on comparisons between two conditions: an experimental condition involving mimicking behavior versus a control condition in which any movement or direct verbal reaction is withdrawn. Thus, it is unclear whether the observed differences stem from a potential increase in liking, trust, or rapport in the mimicry condition or a decrease thereof when naturally occurring gestures are not present during the interaction. To address this potential confound, we included an additional control condition involving responsiveness (but not mimicry) aimed at increasing both internal and external validity. We found significant differences between the mimicry condition and both control conditions, thereby lending support to the original mimicry-as-a-social-glue hypothesis.