How Does Facial Perception Affect Emotions? Essay

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

The mechanisms underlying how the human visual system processes and identifies objects remain to be under investigation, however it is clear that visual recognition can function on many levels including coarse categories – for example identifying a bird, and highly specific subjects –identifying a blue jay. It can be argued that performing both of these identification tasks may require two separate recognition systems; one of category membership and another of individuation (Kanwisher et al., 2004). One variation of this argument questions whether there is a difference between mechanisms utilized to perform object recognition at a basic level and face recognition at an individual level. Specifically, a controversy exists regarding the function of a specific area of the brain called the fusiform face area (FFA), and whether it is selectively activated by faces only, or if it discriminates between any familiar stimuli. Both sides of this argument are supported by evidence from research.

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 .

Emotional intelligence is the idea that people can figure out how others are feeling. Lisa Feldman Barrett has done a study on humans and how the less they know about emotions, the less they can understand others. Barrett tries to convey her message to scientists explaining that the old emotional intelligence system is severely outdated. The essay intrigued me and made me realize that humans are not adept at figuring out the emotions of others. Although the book Emotional Intelligence had precedent ideas of figuring out how people are feeling by their expressions, today’s scientific advances have shown that neurologically, society needs to revamp their ideas on perceiving others’ emotions.

Dance is the beginning of the unit and therefore serves as an introduction to mental and emotions.

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

Emotions can make a powerful or hollow connection between two people. Although a person’s emotions can define their relationship with someone else, emotions can also separate the two people. Relationships can be more meaningful when the people involved are on the same page. Positive emotional connections create stability in relationships.

The one that people tend to rely on the most to see how others truly feel about something are facial expressions. There are also five types of emotions that can be read on a human face throughout multiple cultures: disgust, sadness, happiness, fear, and anger (Izard, 1991; Rozin, Lowery, & Ebert, 1994). What makes this complicated is that multiple expressions can be mixed together and also at times, individual can mask how they are really feeling by using other expressions and emotions to cover them up for numerous

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

Three cultures that have different interpretations or rules of facial expressions when compared to the United States may include; Japan, Puerto Rico or Hawaii I feel like you can tell so much but someone’s facial expressions. As we were growing up my mom would always say, “I can tell your lying, I can see it on your face”. I feel the same way about my children today. I can look at their face and their facial expressions say a lot. I can tell when they are happy, sad, worried or even lying. I read an article called a look into the way culture affects facial expressions. It was a very interesting read. Some things I learned regarding this subject from that article are; Japanese people look to the eyes for emotional signals while American’s look

There is also Alexandra Golby’s research done with her colleagues. The region of the brain that is responsible for facial recognition has an easier time detecting

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 1 explains the work of a Harvard psychologist named William James. William published the article “What is an Emotion?” in a philosophical journal entitled Mind in 1884. His paper is an argument for the primacy and necessity of bodily systems in producing emotional feelings. James-Lange theory states that physiological arousal instigates the experience of emotion. A Harvard physiologist, Walter Cannon, roundly criticized James’ theory, claiming that, according to the Cannon Bard theory, physiological changes follow emotional expression.

For many people, they live their lives based on emotions. Emotions of happiness, love, success, and many more, could possibly be the most satisfying feelings. Except we commonly experience unpleasant emotions. There are emotions of anger, hatred, sadness, and disgrace. A very important question in the understanding of the human mind and highly related to cognitive science, is how do these emotions affect human cognition and the impact on our abilities to be rational? To tackle this question, we need to understand what emotions are, but not solely in the manner we are all familiar with, we need to understand them from a cognitive nature involving our physiology, psychology, and environment. Cognition, according to the Oxford definition

In my Master’s dissertation, I studied the ‘Concept of a Neutral Facial Expression’ under the supervision of Associate Professor, Kamei and Dr. Johri. The objective of the study was to explore the concept of neutral facial expression among school going children (6-7 years of age). Post the pilot study, an experiment was devised to understand how the subjects would behave in the presence of an experimenter with a neutral facial expression on her