Social Engineering Blogs

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Blind Athletes Provide Clues About the Nature of our Emotions

1aBy Melanie Tannenbaum for Scientific American

One of the most important ways that we learn how to interact with the world around us is through observational learning. By watching how our friends and family members behave, we learn at a very young age how to do things like turn on a lightbulb, open a door, or play with a doll, without having to suffer through a tedious trial-by-error reinforcement process every single time we need to learn how to do something new. It’s only natural to assume that we have similarly learned when to smile politely, how to wrinkle our noses in disgust, or why we should furrow our brows in anger by watching the people around us react in those ways when presented with similar emotionally-evocative situations.

But what if observational learning isn’t the only way in which we figure out how to express our emotions? What if those emotional expressions — or at least, some of them — actually come “pre-programmed” into our very nature, and we would make those grimaces, brow-furrows, and polite smiles of thinly-veiled contempt without ever once seeing others make those expressions first?

In a recent study, David Matsumoto and Bob Willingham studied photographs from the Judo competition in the 2004 Olympic Games to examine the athletes’ facial expressions. Predictably, the researchers found that gold and bronze medalists were more likely to display broad smiles and patterns of facial muscle activation that signal genuine happiness, whereas silver medalists were more likely to display “fake” smiles or expressions of contempt and disgust.

This effect had been found in research before, and it wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy, had it not been for one important fact:
Approximately half of the athletes in the photos were blind. In fact, half of the blind athletes had been so since birth, meaning they had never directly observed another person’s emotional expressions.

Not only did both congenitally and noncongenitally blind athletes spontaneously produce emotional facial expressions after winning or losing, their expressions were practically identical to those of the sighted athletes. The blind athletes — even those who had never been able to see for a single day in their lives — not only displayed genuine smiles after winning, they also displayed expressions of contempt or politely fake smiles after losing. Somehow, without ever having seen another person’s face, they still knew what to do with their own faces when they won or lost. For researchers who had been arguing that emotions are “hardwired” and emotional displays like smiles or frowns are biologically determined (rather than learned through culture or social interactions), this finding was a big-time win.

The researchers acknowledge that the congenitally blind athletes’ expressions still could have been socially conditioned. Family members and friends could have verbally reinforced appropriate expressions throughout their lives, so this study is not necessarily proof that emotional displays are completely biologically hardwired. However, this study does show that observation is not necessary in order to learn emotional display and regulation. And, for whatever it’s worth, close others would not be able to verbally reinforce appropriate emotional displays if the blind individuals had never spontaneously generated those expressions in the first place.

To a certain extent, it seems that the way we display our emotions really might come to us naturally.

Smiling People May be Less Likely to be Judged by Their Gender or Race

By Bahar Gholipour and David Freeman for Huffington Post

Could something as simple as a smile put an end to racist and sexist first impressions?

Probably not. But a new study published in the August issue of the journal Motivation and Emotion suggests that when people smile, strangers may be less likely to judge them based on their race and gender. In other words, by conveying friendliness and openness, people may stop some of those harsh snap judgments in their tracks.

But this doesn’t mean you should smile your way through unfair social interactions.

“Some have concluded the implication of this finding is that members of stereotyped minorities could just smile to reduce the likelihood that others will apply stereotypes to them, but that is too simplistic,” said study co-author Nicole Senft of Georgetown University.

“That conclusion places the responsibility on minority group members to combat stereotypes through their own behavior,” Senft said. “Instead, I think it’s important that we all turn the lens inward and become more aware of the many factors that play into the impressions we form of others.”

Senft and her colleagues asked 93 students to look at a series of photographs of faces and rate the person on Big Five personality traits, which include agreeableness, extroversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness and neuroticism. The photographs included Caucasian and Japanese men and women. Half the students looked at photographs showing faces with a neutral expression, and the other half looked at the same faces smiling.

When judging the inexpressive faces, the students showed hints of applying some preconceived notions about gender and ethnicity in their impressions. They rated Caucasian men lower on agreeableness than Caucasian women, and rated Japanese women as less extroverted than their Caucasian counterparts.

However, when the same faces were smiling, these biases disappeared from the ratings.

This might not be that surprising after all. Smiling, just like race, gender and various facial expressions, sends social cues, which people use to form a quick idea about the person they’ve just met.

“We smile to signal our intent to play, to affiliate, to approve, to appease, or to submit,” said psychologist Alan Fridlund of the University of California at Santa Barbara, who wasn’t involved with the study. “All of these motives have in common our signaling others that we mean them no threat.”

But Fridlund isn’t convinced that smiling can do away with the cultural prejudices formed over a lifetime, and said it’s more likely that the findings simply demonstrate a phenomenon called overshadowing: The smile momentarily distracts people of other cues they can get from the other person. “Give people something big to look at, and they are diverted from everything else,” Fridlund said.

Senft also cautions that the study was small and only included American students of European and Asian descent. More work is needed to replicate these findings and examine the effects in other racial groups such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Nevertheless, the finding that something as simple as a smiling face can change how we form first impressions suggests how malleable ― and in a way, superficial ― such impressions can be.

“For me, the takeaway is that we all need to be wary of the impressions we form of people when we don’t have much information to go on,” Senft said. “That sense we sometimes get that a person just ‘isn’t very nice’ might have more to do with our own biases than with anything about them.”

Do They Really Like Their Christmas Present?

Giving and receiving Christmas gifts can be a stressful nightmare but how can you tell if someone really liked their gift?

In a survey of 2,000 Brits, 65% of people confessed to pretending to like a gift to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

The graphic above shows the body language signals to look for to see if someone does or doesn’t like their gift.

Most of us probably know how to read these signs somewhat instinctively- in a study conducted on gift giving, 680 men and women were asked to identify whether or not a recipient liked their gift. 75% of the participants were able to correctly do so. We covered this story in a past blog on Emotions in Gift Giving.

However, in this spirit of giving this holiday season, let’s remember that psychologist have also scientifically proven that one of the greatest contributing factors to overall happiness is how much gratitude you show.

It’s truly the thought that counts and expressing your appreciation for a gift (whether you truly like it or not) can lead to not only your happiness, but the gift giver as well.