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Physiological Resonance and Interpretation of Emotional Expressions813DiscussionThe aim of our study was to explore how expressions of emotion resonate in an observer%u2019s body and mind. There are three main findings: First, the results show that, while participants distinguished between different emotional expressions in selfreports, physiological changes were not strictly corresponding to distinct emotion categories. Even though there was no 1-1 relationship between perception and physiological response, some robust physiological responses could be linked to the perception of certain emotional expressions, i.e. a peak in SCL for angry facial expressions and a decrease in SKT for sad bodily expression. Second, specific facial muscle (de-)activations were reproducibly observed following facial but not bodily expressions of emotion. Third, faces with tears were not only perceived as emotionally intense, but also elicited a robust peak in observers%u2019 skin conductance levels. In the remainder of the discussion, we will discuss these findings in more details. Overall, participants were well able to recognize all emotional expressions. However, they did show variation across expression modalities as well as emotion categories: Apart from displays of sadness, emotional facial expressions were better recognized than emotional bodily expression, with happy faces being most easily identified (Kret, Stekelenburg, et al., 2013; Martinez et al., 2016). One driving factor of this finding might be the intensity of the expression which has been suggested to play a crucial role in recognizing both emotions from the body (Aviezer et al., 2012) and the face (Hess et al., 1997). Happy facial expressions, together with fearful facial expressions, received the second-highest intensity ratings in our study which might have facilitated their recognition. While bodily expressions were shown to be especially informative for the recognition of highintensity emotions (Aviezer et al., 2012), the presented emotional body stimuli in our study were predominantly rated as less intense than their facial counterparts. Only facial and bodily expressions, which were also similarly well recognized, did not differ in their intensity ratings. Our study thus confirms that intensity might be a relevant factor in the recognition of emotional expression. Given the overall high accuracy rates, our results further support that humans are highly capable of identifying and discriminating a variety of emotional expressions (A. S. Cowen & Keltner, 2019; Witkower & Tracy, 2019).