Empathy plays an important role in daily social life and emotional communication. It is the ability to understand and share another person's emotions and may therefore be fundamental for reading another person`s thoughts and feelings; it is probably a critical component of what is called emotional intelligence. One important aspect of empathy is emotional communication, which to a great extent occurs with the help of biologically-based facial expressions. There is no simple definition of empathy. Emotional empathy can be knowing/understanding what another person is feeling; experiencing the same feeling as the other person; and reacting compassionately to another person's distress. The present project will explore which of these components is/are related to emotional empathy when subjects are exposed to pictures of the emotional expressions of other people. Empathy is measured with the help of an established questionnaire. By detecting the subjects' own facial muscle reactions, how they interpret/evaluate the emotional expressions and how their self-experience of emotion is influenced by the exposure of pictures of facial expressions, it is possible to relate these activities to the degree of empathetic ability. The project will study both normal subjects and clinically relevant groups such as people with social fear and Asperger`s syndrome. The project will also focus on sex/gender differences.