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Infants and Emotion

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Courtesy of StockVault

Recent research suggest that infants as young as 18 months can tell when someone is “faking” their feelings when their emotions and expressions don’t align with an event.

New research from Concordia University, reported on by Medical Xpress  suggest that infants 18 months and older have the ability to detect whether a person’s emotions are justifiable.  These findings are significant in that they show that babies emotion recognition and social cognitive abilities are developed enough to understand how the meaning of an experience is directly linked to the expressions that follow.

“Our research shows that babies cannot be fooled into believing something that causes pain results in pleasure. Adults often try to shield infants from distress by putting on a happy face following a negative experience. But babies know the truth: as early as 18 months, they can implicitly understand which emotions go with which events,“ says psychology professor Diane Poulin-Dubois.

92 infants between 15-18 months watched actors go through several emotional reactions that either went with or against pantomimed experiences.

At 15 months, the infants did not show major differences in their reactions to these events.  They showed empathy in their faces to all sad faces they seen regardless of if it matched the event that took place directly before the sad facial expression of the actor.  However, at 18 months, the infants only showed empathy toward the person when their sad face was justified, meaning when the sad face coincided with a sad event.

Psychology researcher  Sabrina Chiarella noted, “The ability to detect sadness and then react immediately has an evolutionary implication. However, to function effectively in the social world, children need to develop the ability to understand others’ behaviors by inferring what is going on internally for those around them.“

Emotion Overload: Crying on Planes

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Courtesy of StockVault

The Atlantic reports on why we tend to cry on planes.  You’re usually alone, secluded from the rest of the world, no contact with anyone (no email or phone). Why not have a good cry?

According to this article, 41% of men stated that they had “buried themselves in blankets to hide tears in their eyes from other passengers.”

According to Elijah Wolfson, there’s no scientific research on the phenomenon of crying on planes, but it’s become quite clear that this experience isn’t limited to his small social group.  In researching the subject, he’s heard from mothers, young couples, sturdy middle-aged men, grandmothers, irony-obsessed millennials, and more; a 2011 segment on This American Life showcased writer Brett Martin’s tearful breakdown on a plane during the end of the Reese Witherspoon vehicle Sweet Home Alabama.

In 2011, Virgin Atlantic ran a survey asking customers to describe their on-flight emotional experiences. Overall, 55% of travelers said they had “experienced heightened emotions while flying,” and as the stunning statisitc previously mentioned, 41 % have also shed some in flight tears.

There are many theories about why humans cry, ranging from the biophysical to the evolutionary. One of the most compelling hypotheses is Jeffrey Kottler’s, discussed at length in his 1996 book The Language of Tears. Kottler believes that humans cry because, unlike every other animal, we take years and years to be able to fend for ourselves. Until that time, we need a behavior that can elicit the sympathetic consideration of our needs from those around us who are more capable (adults). We can’t just yell for help though—that would alert predators to helpless prey—so instead, we’ve developed a silent scream: we tear up.

“It’s the biological equipment used by infants to maintain proximity to their caregivers,” explains Ad Vingerhoets, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and one of the world’s leading experts in crying.

In adults, the issue becomes a bit more complicated. In a study published in 2000, Vingerhoets and a team of researchers found that adults, unlike children, rarely cry in public.  They wait until they’re in the privacy of their homes—when they are alone or, at most, in the company of one other adult. On the face of it, the “crying-as-communication” hypothesis does not fully hold up, and it certainly doesn’t explain why we cry when we’re alone, or in an airplane surrounded by strangers we have no connection to.

While there have not been any peer-reviewed studies of crying on airplanes up to this point, there was study published in 2004 that considered grieving while driving, and in it, researchers found that grievers often “hold off grieving until they are alone and behind the wheel. They are free then from the distractions…this time by themselves provides them with the freedom for emotional processing and relief.”