The spontaneous mimicry of others' emotional facial expressions constitutes a rudimentary form of empathy and facilitates social understanding. Here, we show that human participants spontaneously match facial expressions of an android physically present in the room with them. This mimicry occurs even though these participants find the android unsettling and are fully aware that it lacks intentionality. Interestingly, a video of that same android elicits weaker mimicry reactions, occurring only in participants who find the android "humanlike." These findings suggest that spontaneous mimicry depends on the salience of humanlike features highlighted by face-to-face contact, emphasizing the role of presence in human-robot interaction. Further, the findings suggest that mimicry of androids can dissociate from knowledge of artificiality and experienced emotional unease. These findings have implications for theoretical debates about the mechanisms of imitation. They also inform creation of future robots that effectively build rapport and engagement with their human users.

Objective

Medical certification is one of the basic administrative mechanisms used by social policies aimed at income protection. The assessment of work disability is central to the income protection application. Yet, there is evidence suggesting that determining work disability related to mental disorders is challenging. Although essential to the disability application process, few studies have looked at physician and other clinician experiences with the process. However, this type of information is critical to developing processes to support providers who participate in the assessments. This purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of physicians and other clinicians assessing public long-term work disability related to mental disorders.

Methods

This is an exploratory and descriptive study using qualitative methods. Clinician input was gathered through focus groups and individual in-depth interviews. Verbatim transcripts were analyzed to identify recurrent and significant themes that arose during the focus groups and individual interviews.

Results

Many of the experiences that the clinicians in this sample discussed related to the difficulty of trying to fill the roles of advocate and medical expert as well as the challenge of determining the impact of functional capacity and work ability. The findings also highlight the current gap in knowledge about the factors that affect successful functioning in general and at work in particular.

Conclusions

Given the challenges created by the current state of knowledge, it may be useful to consider a category of "partial disability". In addition, the fact that work disability depends on the interaction between the experience of the mental disorder and specific job requirements and the fact that people applying for public long-term disability are not working, it might be helpful to offer a clear description and guidelines of the meaning of work ability.