Not My Lips!
Singled out by the TSA for a sneaky-looking facial expression (yeah, they’re trained to do that)? Searching your loved one’s face for the answer to a deep question? You may be looking in the wrong spot. Despite what we all think, it turns out that facial expressions can be ambiguous when viewed independently, while body language more accurately conveys intense emotions.
This, according to Princeton University researchers, means “there is a lot of information in body language people aren’t necessarily aware of.”
In four separate experiments displaying photos of people in intense emotional situations—pain, pleasure, victory, defeat, grief, and joy—participants more accurately guessed a pictured emotion based on body language than on facial context alone. Senior researcher Alexander Todorov says “People can’t tell the difference [between positive and negative emotions], although they think they can.” When emotions reach a certain intensity, the intricacies of facial expressions become lost, similar to “increasing the volume on stereo speakers to the point that it becomes completely distorted,” he said.
Jamin Halberstadt, a psychology professor familiar with the Princeton research but with no role it, says, “This is not saying that bodily context helps interpret an expression of emotion—it is saying that bodily context is the expression of emotion. And the face reveals a general intensity of feeling but doesn’t communicate what the person is feeling exactly. The body is where the valid information comes from during intense feelings.”
Todorov says, “There are lots of cues that help us in the social environment, but we often think the face has this special status, that we can tell so much from it. In reality it tells us much less than we think.”
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