Higher autistic traits, in contrast, were associated with worse recognition, and a weakened link between facial mimicry and performance. Our results showed that confidence in emotion recognition was lower with higher social anxiety traits even though actual recognition was not related to social anxiety traits. While participants were presented with videos of spontaneous emotional facial expressions, we measured their facial muscle activity, asked them to label the expressions and indicate their confidence in accurately labelling the expressions. Using a non-clinical sample (N = 57), we examined the role of social anxiety and autistic traits in the link between facial mimicry, or confidence in one’s performance, and emotion recognition. Differences in the integration of these two information sources might explain alterations in the perception of others’ emotions in individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder and individuals on the autism spectrum. Facial mimicry as well as the accurate assessment of one's performance when judging others’ emotional expressions have been suggested to inform successful emotion recognition.

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