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Chapter 7204integration of physiological arousal in processing social information remains to be seen. Next to showing no evidence for an altered physiological resonance of emotional expressions, my studies in both clinical and non-clinical samples did not indicate that negative facial expressions would be recognized better or judged as more intense as function of social anxiety (trait levels). The presence, or at least anticipations of, a real social situation might be necessary to induce negatively biased processing of social information (Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). I nevertheless assumed that individuals with social anxiety and individuals with high social anxiety trait levels would show a reduced confidence in their emotion recognition skills, in line with their general beliefs about lower social skills (Voncken et al., 2020). Surprisingly, my expectations were only confirmed in the study with a non-clinical sample (CH4): individuals with higher social anxiety trait levels showed lower confidence in the recognition of all expression categories whereas there was only non-robust evidence for lower confidence in the recognition of sad expressions in individuals with clinically diagnosed social anxiety compared to controls. One potential explanation could be that one more emotion category, namely surprise, was included in the study with a non-clinical sample, rendering the task more difficult. Hence, it might be interesting to examine the extent to which social skill judgments in social anxiety are influenced by both task-related factors as well as the social nature of the context. Distinct Alterations in Facial Emotion Processing in Autism and Social Anxiety (Trait Levels)Despite their high comorbidity, this thesis provides evidence that a process linked to difficulties in social functioning, the perception of others%u2019 emotions, seems to be differentially affected in autism and social anxiety. Namely, I mainly observed evidence that the resonance of other%u2019s facial emotions, both on a physiological and on a experiential level, would be reduced in autism (or high autistic trait levels). Further, the link between the two levels also seems to be weaker, suggesting that physiological information (i.e., facial mimicry) might be less integrated in processing others%u2019 facial emotions. Thus, in line with the idea that individuals on the autism spectrum use different paths to recognizing others%u2019 emotions, they might follow this embodied path less than non-autistic individuals do.