A Foundation For Studying Emotional Psychology

Science released an article entitled “Facial Expressions—Including Fear—May Not Be as Universal as We Thought”, written by Michael Pierce on October 17, 2016. In this article Pierce discusses how 50 years ago it was assumed that facial expressions were universal. However, it has been found that in the present day, this may not be the case. Expressions such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, or hunger, were all assumed to be expressed the same way as well as interpreted the same way. A study was conducted in the Trobriand Islands, were Trobrianders were shown as series of photos with facial expressions. They were asked to describe the emotions they interpreted from the photos, the results were intriguing. Pierce (2016) describes how

Results of the experiment overwhelmingly supported the hypothesis. Particularly in the measurements of smiling. Male-female dyads showed extraordinarily higher frequencies of smiling during conversation than the other dyads. Both same gender dyads showed relatively marginal to moderate frequencies for smiling. Eye contact frequencies were also higher for male-female dyads, though not as overwhelmingly as smiling. In contrast, both same gender dyads showed relatively low frequencies for eye contact.

Facial expressions -The human face is extremely expressive, able to express countless emotions without saying a word. And unlike some forms of nonverbal communication, facial expressions are

Facial Expression: The facial expression such as happiness, sadness, anger and fear helps a lot in conveying a message. These facial expressions are similar all over the world but non- verbal communication and behaviour varies hugely between the cultures in the world.Since the look on a person’s face is noticed , before we hear ,facial expression contributes a lot in a successfully non-verbal communication .

| Facial expressions – Facial expression reveals a great deal about our feelings. A blank facial expression makes it much harder to interpret what is being said and makes it harder for the service user to understand the nature of the conversation.

The overall results collected by 257 students for each of the expression is roughly 2.8 for frown, 3.2 for neutral, and 3.9 for smile, each data at a statistically significant p-value of 0.001. This result disproves the norm of reciprocity theory in the hypothesis since a frown received a response closer to neutral.

There are eight key forms of nonverbal communications used on a daily basis. These forms can affect the way people view another person; however, without understanding the forms of nonverbal communication there is certain to be a lot of misinterpretations. Cultural and language differences are a common reason for miscommunication. When communicating with people in different cultures, a person should be extremely aware of the hand gestures and nonverbal communication tools they are using. Many of the hand gestures used in the United States that mean good things, mean offensive and profane things to other cultures. Nonverbal communication is described as body language, hand gestures, and facial expressions. It is known that people reveal more information through nonverbal communication, than words alone to get a point across. There will always be some interaction between two or more people that everyone’s

Thesis Statement: Body language expresses emotions and actions unconsciously and differs between men and women depending on their brain type, emotional experience and culture.

The concept may sound reliable, however, there isn’t any set of ground rules to carry it out. That is to say as much of this sounds ideal in the article, however, doesn’t translate well to the real world. Frankly, emotions are hard to handle or even interpret because of many factors, especially since it one’s personal response on how they feel at a given time. The article proposes great points of views which provide many examples, especially of prominent people like Plato, Elias, and Durkheim. With these authors credited in, it provides the article with reliability. Furthermore, the article is well researched based on the findings and is logically

Cunningham believes that a smile does not only contains a positive emotion. She was being informative when she states that people from different cultures also smiles when they are frighten, miserable, or embarrassed. Emphasizing her point further, she provided an example from Japan. Correspondingly, Cunningham used research and facts as she addressed “Psychologist Paul Ekman, the head of the University of California’s Human Interaction Lab in San Francisco, has identified 18 distinct types of smiles, including those that shows misery, compliance, fear and contempt.” (263). Aside from using logos to enhance her argument, Cunningham also uses ethos in considered to make the audience feels more certain when reading her article. Notwithstanding, her point of view, she after then states a sentence that is considered to be a fallacy. Introduction to her next paragraph, she wrote “Evidently, a woman’s happy, willing deference, is something the world wants visibly.”, and example of hasty generalization. Though it was said evidently, there was no follow up reasons to support that the worlds wants it clearly. A woman’s happiness is something that not everyone to embrace. Therefore, it is yet another stereotyped that the authors support but did not established through

The smile had become a standard in all advertisements by the 1800s. Cunningham gives an office scenario where a woman is asked to present a project she has been having trouble getting under control. Instead of shrieking she would respond with a very nervous smile. She also mentions the studies by psychologists, especially that of Paul Ekman. Dr. Ekman has identified 18 different types of smiles representing all the kinds of emotions. The Duchenne Smile, the smile that defines true happiness, is characterized by various micro expressions and the feelings can be understood through the eyes, which in the case of American women is not possible as their smile is not always or at all associated with their state of mind. The author talks about how being limited to one expression is like an orchestra with one instrument. Cunningham gives an office scenario where a woman is asked to present a project she has been having trouble getting under control. Instead of shrieking she would respond with a very nervous

Most people are surprised to learn exactly how much information they communicated about themselves through their facial expressions. The intricacies of what one does with their the eyes, eyebrows, forehead, lips, tongue, teeth, and mouth while listening or talking combine to send some

Paul Ekman was born in 1934 and at age 14 his mother committed suicide after suffering from severe bi-polar disorder. At that point, he decided he wanted to study facial expressions of emotion in order to assist other people before such tragic outcomes occurred. By the time he was 15, he had enrolled in University of Chicago and became interested in group therapy. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in 1954 and in 1958 he had earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Adelphi University. His Master’s thesis was about the study of facial expressions and body movement. From 1960 to 2004 he worked at the University of California and starting in 1963 he received continual research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health for 40 years to study nonverbal behavior.

The aim of the present study was to investigate which hemisphere is specialised for the perception of emotion. It was hypothesised that participants will judge chimeric faces with smile presented in the left visual field as happier more often than chimeric faces with the smile presented in the right visual field. Twenty-six psychology students were asked to judge chimeric faces with one half being a smiling expression and the other half with a neutral expression. The images were presented in their left and right visual field. Over 28 experimental trials the participants were asked to judge which face they thought looked happier. The percentage of chimeric faces judged as happier for both left and right visual field was recorded. The hypothesis was supported: chimeric faces with smile presented in the left visual field as happier more often than chimeric faces with the smile presented in the right visual field.

Chapter 3 explores the concept of universally shared basic emotions, an idea that was first advanced as a theory by Charles Darwin. Paul Ekman and Jakk Panksepp studied the concept of