Social Engineering Blogs

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Why Try to Read Others?

At Humintell, we certainly talk a lot about reading other people’s emotions, but why is this such a big deal?

One obvious answer is that it is just really fascinating psychology, but there are also relevant and practical reasons to improve your ability to read microexpressions and other nonverbal cues. Not only are they particularly useful during law enforcement interrogations or cross-cultural interactions, but the ability to read others is useful in almost any interpersonal setting.

But first, what exactly is a microexpression? As Humintell’s Director, Dr. David Matsumoto, explains, “Microexpressions are unconscious, extremely quick, sometimes full-face expressions of an emotion. And sometimes they’re partial and very subtle expressions of emotion.”

Often, these microexpressions signify one of the seven basic emotions, but the majority of people either does not see any expression change or cannot understand the brief facial tick they see. Part of this is due to the incredibly brief nature of microexpressions, which can pass over a face as quickly as one-fifteenth of a second.

This means, Dr. Matsumoto points out, that freeze frame shots of individuals exhibiting microexpressions are not particularly subtle, but instead “if you take a freeze frame on it on a video, you’ll see that a lot of times there’s a big facial expression that is very clear about what the person’s mental state is.”

Reading other people’s emotions is not limited to microexpressions, however, as gestures and other types of nonverbal behavior are also telling signs of subtle or hidden emotional states. Dr. Matsumoto divides gestures into “speech illustrators” and “emblems.” The former, speech illustrators, are everyday animated gestures that many people use to emphasize or complement their speech.

Speech illustrators tend to be used by people from every culture, but they do differ in specifics. Emblems, on the other hand, are culturally specific gestures that refer to specific phrases, like a thumbs up.

The ability to read microexpressions is incredibly helpful in law enforcement or national security-related settings, where an interviewee may actively be concealing information. Nonverbal behavior analysis can help us “understand other people’s true feelings, their thoughts, their motivations, their personalities or their intentions.”

Yet, as Dr. Matsumoto points out, the application of emotional detection is “very clear for anybody whose job it is to be able to get that kind of additional insight.” It is not limited to law enforcement professionals but can be helpful to psychotherapists, sales professionals, lawyers, doctors, etc.

Similarly, as the cultural dependency of different gestures alluded to, the ability to understand nonverbal behavior can help us understand exactly what a person is trying to say. Knowing specific gestures can help, but also given the universality of basic emotional expressions, happiness, anger, or fear all present themselves similarly across the world.

Stay tuned with Humintell for more information on the importance of reading other people’s emotions, but in the meantime, check out our training packages here and here.

The Contagious Smile

Many of us often feel that smiling can be irresistibly contagious, but is this actually true?

In fact, a recent study published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that other people’s expressions really can have a tangible impact on our mood. The study authors, Dr. Paula Niedenthal and Adrienne Wood, found that we instinctively mimic other people’s faces, triggering the associated expressions.

This serves as a way for people to learn to empathize and to better read others by literally trying on their facial expressions. Amazingly this process can happen in only a few hundred milliseconds.

As Dr. Niedenthal said, “You reflect on your emotional feelings and then you generate some sort of recognition judgment, and the most important thing that results is that you take the appropriate action–you approach the person or you avoid the person.”

While they did not report exactly how this works in our brain, their results are reminiscent of previous research on the use of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are brain cells that are triggered, when we see other people’s actions. This can include facial expressions and many neurologists see mirror neurons as the key to explaining how we experience empathy.

However, the authors mentioned that this critical skill is not accessible to everyone, including those who have social disorders or challenges presenting facial expressions. Dr. Niedenthal pointed out that “There are some symptoms in autism where lack of facial mimicry may in part be due to suppression of eye contact.”

This is an exciting connection, given recent research that has shown that an autistic individual often struggles to empathize due to the inability to recognize faces and emotions. If an autistic individual has trouble even recognizing another person’s facial expression, it is that much more difficult to mimic it and thus empathize.

Similarly, Humintell has previously worked to draw attention to those who live with Moebius Syndrome. Those with this condition experience a form of facial paralysis that makes it impossible to display facial expressions. This causes challenges relating interpersonally as the lack of expression makes emotional communication challenging.

Presumably, from Dr. Niedenthal and Dr. Wood’s research, this also prevents effective facial mimicry for both the person with Moebius Syndrome and their interlocutor.

Thankfully, as we have discussed, reading facial expressions is not merely an innate ability on which we cannot improve. Instead, we can learn to better recognize people’s expressions and emotions.

That is exactly what Humintell is here for! If you want to better learn this skill, check out our workshops and training programs.

Income and Emotional Recognition

Would it surprise you that wealthier people are actually worse at reading emotions?

A growing body of research is beginning to show that the less well off a person is the more they have learned to read other people’s emotional expressions. While it might seem counterintuitive, this skill connected with the increased practical necessity of detecting emotions when one is of a lower economic background.

For instance, in a 2010 study, a team of researchers performed a series of experiments on emotional recognition as it related to socioeconomic status. In one experiment, participants were shown a series of portraits and asked to identify the emotions displayed. In another, they engaged in mock job interviews, trying to detect emotions during an actual interaction with another person.

The results were divided between participants with college educations and those without, as the authors saw educational level as an important indicator of economic background. In both instances, the less educated participants scored higher in emotional accuracy, with women unsurprisingly testing higher than men.

A particularly interesting takeaway is the fact that these results did not depend on an actual interaction, as emotional accuracy was also demonstrated from just an analysis of a picture and its facial expression!

One of the authors, Dr. Michael Kraus of Yale University, remarked “Other people’s thoughts, intentions, or wishes loom larger in my outcomes if I’m lower income… That’s because, if something happens to me, I need to recruit other people to help me deal with situations.”

This may also be due to wealthier individuals simply paying less attention to other people in public than those from higher socioeconomic statuses. A 2016 study examined participants as they walked down public streets, using Google Glass technology to track their eye movements.

The study authors found that those with higher incomes tended to look at other people less frequently than those with low incomes. These same results held when participants simply examined pictures of busy streets.

These results, while perhaps surprising, fit with the idea of emotional recognition as a skill rather than some sort of inherent trait. People who need to develop the skill, and have high stakes opportunities to do so, will become better at emotional recognition.

Similarly, past research shows that emotional intelligence is something that is heavily shaped by upbringing, so people raised in low-income households may be more likely to have this skill as a major part of their early education.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t develop this skill, regardless of your income. Teaching people to become better at reading emotions is exactly what Humintell does!