Americans are a diverse group of people interacting on a daily basis often times in stressful situations.

How different are our cultural stress coping mechanisms and are they working?

The American Psychological Association, APA reports that according to UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman, Ph.D., the idea that putting problems into words will ease the emotional impact of those problems even across cultures.

Lieberman took this idea a step further, in 2003, by investigating it with the latest brain imaging technology (fMRIs).  “There’s this idea that putting bad feelings into words can help wash worries away,” he purported.

Lieberman and his colleagues found that social rejection activates a part of the brain that is also stimulated in response to physical pain.

Interestingly, they also found that people who had relatively less activity in that area-and who reported feeling relatively less distress-had more activity in the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with verbalizing thoughts and language production.

Their study’s results which were published in Science suggest that “talking it out” can help ease a person’s emotional response to tough situations by suppressing the area of the brain that produces emotional distress.

I can almost hear groans of guys across the world who fear the words “we need to talk” but who will no longer be able to say “Nothing will come of it, or “talking never solves anything”.

On a more recent note, Lieberman and his colleagues conducted another study that will be published in Psychological Science that tests this hypothesis more directly.

They asked 30 participants to view pictures of angry, scared or happy-looking faces. Half of the time the participants tried to match the target face to another picture of a face with a similar expression. The other half of the time, they tried to match the face to a word that correctly labeled its emotion.

Using fMRI, the researchers discovered that when the participants labeled the faces’ emotions using words, they showed less activity in the amygdala-an area of the brain associated with emotional distress.  At the same time, they showed more activity in the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex-the same language-related area that showed up in their previous study.

This is further evidence that verbalizing an emotion may activate the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, which then suppresses the areas of the brain that produce emotional pain.

What are your thoughts on this study?  Does “talking it out” really help the emotional impact of a problem?

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often struggle to recognize emotions from facial expressions (facial affect), hindering their social interactions.

By using Humintell’s emotion recognition training tool MiX, researchers out of Rush University Medical Center in Skokie, Illinois tested children ages 8-14 who are affected with autism spectrum disorder over a six week period.

Russo, et. al’s findings, Efficacy of a facial affect recognition training tool for children with autism spectrum disorders, were presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research in San Diego, CA this past May.

The results of their study suggests that coach-assisted computerized training with imitation exercises successfully alleviated facial affect recognition deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Although future studies should investigate whether “boosters” are necessary to maintain the skill long-term, their results suggest that by using a computerized emotion recognition training program, children with autism could improve their facial expression recognition ability.

The result of this study correlates directly with another recent study that demonstrates the positive benefits of autistic children and adults using computers.

Thank to you everyone for your overwhelming response to the “Submit your questions to Dr. Matsumoto” post on March 16th. Here are a few questions and answers by Dr. Matsumoto himself!

You can find out more about Dr. Matsumoto and his research at his website

You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of the series by clicking on the appropriate links.

Q1. Adam L: Why is there no Action Unit #3 in F.A.C.S.? And what does AU #42 mean?

Hey Adam. Actually AU3 exists in BabyFACS, a FACS that is adapted for baby faces. The adult version of that is AU4, but it is left out in the adult FACS because that muscle doesn’t move independently of AU4 in adults. But it exists in kids. I am not sure of any studies that identify the meaning of AU42. I know it has been identified in studies of sleepiness or pain.

Q2. Kyle Stark: Have you noticed any difference in an athlete’s performance when displaying fear nonverbal communication displays such as macro face expressions vs more confident non verbal communication?

Not really. Sometimes I see fear or sadness on an athlete’s face right before competition, but then they turn out just fine in competition. So I began to think that different athletes have different emotions that help prep them for peak performance. Now if you see too much fear or sadness way before competition, like days or months before, that’s not good.

Q3. Oliver Lane:  Do you find any, inspiration or any theories and ideas, from Dale Carnegie’s book “How to win friends and influence people”?

I am not an expert on that book, but know it cursorily. Based on that cursory knowledge I think many of the main principles about the importance of relationships and expressivity are right on and still applicable even today. Maybe especially today.

Q4. Juan Pablo García says: What is your scientific opinion on the physiognomy?

Sorry this question doesn’t make sense to me. If you can you be more specific, I can answer it in the comments section.

Q5. Tim Bubb says: My sociology teacher and I have frequently debated on whether there are any innate parts of nonverbal communication and body language. She is a social constructionist and my belief is that some of it is innate but the vast majority is socialized. I was wondering could you shed some light on that debate?

It is clear to me that facial expressions of emotion, and the physiological emotion system in general, is biologically innate. There are many sources of evidence for this, perhaps the strongest of which are studies of congenitally blind individuals, which cannot be explained by social construction.

Q6. Cristobal says: What is the best way to increase your non verbal awareness? Or to say it another way, to increase your mastery in body language?

Keep practicing, noting behaviors and especially anomalies, and try to find sources that can teach you how to interpret them correctly. There is a growing scientific literature on all of these.

Here’s a blog article that may interest you: Hot Spotting: Practice Makes Perfect

Q7. Tiffany S. says: Do psychopaths have ability to show universal emotions, as we know microexpressions to be? Are they more likely to know when to mimic ‘right’ emotions and mask ‘wrong’ emotions. Are they easier to read in an interview or harder, utilizing microexpression training?

I know of no scientific study of psychopaths and their emotional expressions. However, I have done some reading on psychopaths and have talked to some experts in this field. Based on that I don’t believe that anything about expressions is any different with the psychopaths. Now, they are very different about what events they get emotional about, which is not normal.

Q8. Dan S. says: Why are some FACS codes in parentheses? What does this signify?

Hmm…which ones are you referring to?

Q9. WC says: In your opinion what kind of jobs could you best use this material in aside from the obvious TSA and law enforcement fields?

I would say anything involving face to face interactions. Physicians, lawyers, poker players, therapists, sales, negotiators, etc