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Benefits of Reading Facial Expressions of Emotion

The importance of nonverbal communication (NVC) and nonverbal behavior (NVB) are indisputable and there’s a vast amount of information that we can glean about individuals from them. But while all channels of nonverbal behavior are important, the most important is the face, and for good reason: the face is the most complex nonverbal signal system in the body, and it is used to express many different kinds of mental states.

Thus, no wonder we have face to face interactions, not elbow to elbow or butt to butt.

There’s good reasons why we look at each other’s faces when we interact: the face is the primary center of all that information above. And we are continuously processing that information when we interact with others.

What’s so Special about Facial Expressions?

Of all these signals, facial expressions of emotion are very, very special, because emotions are special types of psychological phenomena. As we’ve been discussing in our past few blogs, emotions are reactions to events that are meaningful for us. They are triggered by an information processing system in our minds that appraise or evaluate events that happen around us, and inside us. When triggered, emotions recruit an organized system of reactions that produce specific physiological signatures, direct our cognitions, and produce specific types of feelings.

Importantly, emotions produce specific, nonverbal behavior in the face, voice, and body, and different emotions are expressed by different, specific, unique facial configurations that are universal to all cultures, regardless of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender or any other demographic variable.

Benefits of Reading Facial Expressions of Emotion

  1. Facial expressions of emotion are probably the most important signal of the face because they tell us about people’s personalities, emotions, motivations, or intent.
  2. They are not only signs of people’s internal states; they are also signals to others to act in certain ways, providing messages for social coordination.
  3. They are also important signals of socialization and enculturation.

Facial expressions are also special because they can signal different, discrete emotions (otherwise known as the seven basic emotions or seven universal emotions) – anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

As we’ve discussed previously, different emotions are associated with different antecedent and appraisal processes, and turn on different cognitive and physiological reactions in order to prime the body for action. Each discrete emotion signaled by facial expressions has a specific function, such as to remove obstacles, eliminate contaminants, or reduce harm.

A Window to a Person’s Mental States and Processes

When we read facial expressions of emotion, we don’t just read how others are feeling. Because of the characteristics of emotion described above and discussed in our previous blogs, facial expressions of emotion are windows to a person’s mental states and processes.

When we read someone’s facial expressions of emotion, we know

  • How their mind is processing something (antecedents and appraisals)
  • What their thoughts are turned toward (cognitive gating)
  • What their bodies are primed to do in terms of action (functions of emotion; physiological signatures)

gesture-triumph-children-computer

For example, if we read anger, we know that a person’s mind if processing goal obstruction, that blood is rushing disproportionately to their arms to prepare them to fight, and that their cognitions are gating to be aware of threat signals in others. If we read disgust, we know that a person’s mind is processing contamination, and their cognitions are gating towards eliminating contaminated objects. If we read fear, we know that their minds are processing threat, blood is rushing to their legs, and they are primed to flee or freeze.

The Science

Thus, reading each of the universal facial expressions of emotion is so important because when we read faces, we are actually reading the mind processing and evaluating stimuli. And when we see a specific, discrete emotion, we know how they evaluated something. We know the direction of what people are thinking, and equally important, we know what their bodies are primed to do doing before they do. Think about how important this is for people in harm’s way.

All this information that we can read from facial expressions of emotion allow us to get insights into the minds of the people with whom we interact, even when they are not talking. They allow us to draw reasonable inferences and testable hypotheses about people’s personalities, motivations, and intentions, which are incredibly important for many professionals.

When we observe facial expressions of emotion when people are talking, those emotional expressions give us important cues about how we should interpret the content of the words spoken. As with all nonverbal behavior, facial expressions of emotion can supplement, complement, qualify, or contradict spoken words, all of which are important moderators of how much as should infer from words alone.

Added Benefits of Reading Facial Expressions

There are additional benefits to being interested in reading facial expressions of emotion, too. Doing so shows interest in others by paying attention.

Ever observe or experience an interaction when people appear not to be interested in you or what you’re saying? And, catching emotion signals of others is a conversation starter or multiplier. It can be the basis for further discussion, including understanding others on an emotional level. Reading facial expressions of emotion is the basis for empathy. And because they’re universal, facial expressions of emotion are the closest thing we have to a universal language.

When we really think about it, we know why reading facial expressions of emotion is so, so important. These are the benefits of reading facial expressions, which you cannot get from reading any other channel of nonverbal behavior. That doesn’t mean that reading other channels is not important. But it does mean facial expressions of emotion are special, and the reason why we focus on it in our research and training.


For those of you have learned the basics of reading facial expressions of emotion with one of our online courses, challenge yourself to become even more skilled in reading them with other, more advanced courses.

For those of you have haven’t yet experienced learning to read facial expressions of emotion with one of our introductory courses, give it a shot! Now’s the time, for all the reasons above.

If you learn to read facial expressions of emotion and incorporate that skill into your professional practices, interviews, negotiations, sales, and the like, it will be a force multiplier like you’ve never witnessed.

The post Benefits of Reading Facial Expressions of Emotion first appeared on Humintell.

Why Do We Have Emotions?

Ever wonder why we have emotions? Emotions seem to cause all kinds of problems, from being distractions to disrupting our critical thinking, which is why we spend so much time trying to find ways to regulate them. So wondering about why we have them in the first place is natural.

Emotions are a Vestige of our Evolutionary History

And are primarily controlled by an archaic part of the human brain. Despite what we may want to think, having an emotion system that appraised events around us and triggered emotions was helpful in that evolutionary past, for many reasons. That very same emotion system helped humans to ward off threats, fight for food, obtain and keep mates, build families and communities – basically to survive. Moreover, that system helped us humans to survive in many situations that required an immediate response or action.

The Spoiled Milk ExampleWhy we have emotions

For example, recall the example of drinking spoiled milk. Suppose you were like my kids when they were younger (and probably even now), and just went over to the refrigerator in the morning for some milk. Instead of putting it in a cup to drink as their mother always told them to do, you just opened the carton and started chugging it.

But as the cold liquid was going down your throat, you started to realize the sour taste. And the lumps. And the putrid smell. At that moment, would you take the time to contemplate the risk-benefit ratio of just gulping it all down vs. not?

Well, if you did take the time to think it all through, you would have ingested that spoiled milk and it would be in your system, along with all the other contaminants in there, which would obviously make you sick and/or even bring about death. That definitely wouldn’t be good for survival!

Why We Have Emotions

Emotions help us react in some situations with minimal conscious awareness. They help us freeze or flee when there’s an immediate danger, to fight when there’s an obstacle to our goals, or to repel spoiled, rotten, or contaminated things, like spoiled milk, before we ingest them.

Thank god we don’t go through such time consuming, risk-benefit calculations for many life or death events and situations – those that have implications for our health or safety. Those with that system survived and remain here today; those without that system were selected out of existence by nature.

We’ve discussed how each of the basic emotions are triggered by a universal, underlying psychological theme. In the very same way, each of the basic emotions have a unique function, that is, each helps us do something fairly specific. All of these aid us ultimately in our survival. Thus, getting a handle on the function of each of the basic emotions gives us an idea of why we have each of these emotions in the first place, and what roles they played in getting us here.

Here’s a brief list of the functions of each of the seven basic emotions that are universally expressed:

How Do Emotions Help to Achieve These Functions?

Here’s the key: decades of research has demonstrated that, when each of the emotions above is elicited, the emotion system recruits and turns on an organized, coordinated system of bodily responses that prepare the body for action. In the scholarly literature, this is known as action readiness, a term coined by the famous emotion scholar Nico Frijda.

This system of emotional responses gates our cognitions and thinking, turns on specific psychological signatures that prime our bodies for action, produces specific feelings, and is associated with specific behavioral signatures in the face, voice, and body. All of these prepare us to act. By the way, this research evidence exists only for the basic emotions above and not the many other emotions humans experience. That’s why we believe this is a very special list of emotions.

emoji-brain-facial-recogitionBrainy Things

Now, humans have a part of the brain called the cortex, which allows us to learn and remember rules and to think before acting most of the time. So, whether we act or not is an interaction of our emotions, the context, norms, and needs at the time. Nonhuman animals that have primitive emotions don’t have as much cortex, and thus just act impulsively or reflexively when emotional.

This emotion system allows emotions to achieve the functions above, all of which have helped humans survive since we’ve been around. If you want to have a better understanding of your own emotions, thinking about what function each plays in our lives when you have it may be interesting and meaningful for you.

Sometimes I hear people say that life would be better if we didn’t have emotions, or that even though emotions may have been useful for human life sometime in the past, they’ve outlived their utility to us.

Certainly seems to me that there’s many out there in today’s world who believe that artificial intelligence, robots, and other forms of technology will be able to replace humans in many situations; these technologies certainly are playing a larger role in everyday societies today more than ever before. And quite honestly, life for many in contemporary society with our modern inconveniences is pretty cushy. Nowadays more people seem to panic because of loss of a cell signal or low battery than because of being attacked by a predatory animal.

To me, nothing could be further from the truth.

Emotions give our lives meaning, and life without emotions is impossible to imagine. The joy we feel when we accomplish a tough goal, the pleasure of the touch of a loved one, and the fun we have with our friends on a night out all color our lives in profound ways.

Even our negative emotions are important: the sadness when away from our loved ones, the death of a family member, the anger when violated, the fear that overcomes us in a scary or unknown situation, the guilt or shame toward others when our sins are made public, and yes the panic from low battery or forgetting one’s cell phone.

From the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat, emotions color our lives. They inform us of who we are, what’s important to us, what our relationships with others are like, and how to behave. Without emotions, those events would be mere facts. What more important function of emotion could there be than to give our lives meaning?

The post Why Do We Have Emotions? first appeared on Humintell.

What Triggers Emotions in Humans?

What Triggers Emotions in Humans?What are some examples of things that trigger emotions? Getting stuck in traffic? Being hungry? Watching the news? How your partner squeezes the tube of toothpaste (yes, this is one of my pet peeves!)?

Most emotion scientists believe that emotions are triggered by how we evaluate events.

These events include not only what happens around us, but also thoughts and feelings in our heads, because those thoughts and feelings can themselves trigger emotions.

Appraisal Theories of Emotion

This evaluation process is known as appraisal, and over the decades there have been tons of research that have led to many different appraisal theories of emotion. Although there are differences among them, these theories generally state that there are different emotions are triggered (or elicited) by different ways we appraise or evaluate events, and that different emotions are triggered by different appraisals.

Cross-cultural research on emotion has contributed a wealth of information about many domains of emotion.

In my last blog on understanding anger, we discussed about how that body of research has informed us about what is known about emotion antecedents and appraisals.

Learn tips and techniques on how to better manage your emotions!

Join us for our LIVE webinar on March 25, 2021! More info here.

What are Antecedents?

Stomach, Health, Diet, Dessert, Eating, Belly, Sugar

Antecedents are the specific events that people identify to trigger emotions.

Those include things like what are at the top of this blog – getting stuck in traffic, being hungry, watching the news, or the toothpaste fiasco. But as mentioned just above, antecedents can also include thoughts about the future, memories about the past, and even one’s current emotions.

Universal, Psychological Themes

Research has demonstrated that, despite many differences (and similarities) in the specific types of events that trigger emotions in us, there are universal, psychological themes associated with each of the seven universal emotions – anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

A psychological theme is the basic, most elemental way in which our minds process and evaluate any event in terms of what the event means to us psychologically. These themes are mostly concerned with our welfare.

The fact that there are universal, psychological themes associated with basic emotions means that the same underlying, psychological themes trigger the same emotion in all humans around the world, regardless of differences in race, culture, nationality and any other demographic characteristic.

In that last blog (hopefully it was helpful for some to deal with their anger episodes), we learned that the universal, psychological theme that triggers anger all around the world is goal obstruction. That is, regardless of whatever the specific event is, if the event is appraised or evaluated in our minds as “goal obstruction,” that appraisal would trigger the emotion of anger.

In the same way, each of the other basic emotions are associated with a universal, psychological theme that triggers it all around the world.

 

Quick Descriptions of Themes for the Other Basic Emotions

Contempt – Moral Superiority

Contempt is the emotion that is elicited when our minds appraise something or someone as beneath us.

 

Disgust – Contamination

Disgust is triggered when our minds appraise something that is dirty, rotten, offensive, or contaminated.

Read how anger, contempt and disgust fuel hostility

Fear – Threat

Fear is triggered when our minds appraise something as threatening, or potentially threatening, or sense of self. The sense of self that is threatened can be our physical self as well as our psychological self.

Happiness – Goal Attainment

Achieving our goals triggers happiness (which makes happiness sort of the opposite of anger, not sadness).

Sadness – Loss

Loss of a loved object or other person elicits sadness.

Did you know? Children as old as 12 have difficulty telling the difference between genuine and fake sadness from facial expressions. Read more here.

Surprise – Novel Objects

Surprise is triggered when something is new. Interesting, surprise tends to be the briefest emotion because things are not new to us for very long.

Where do emotion appraisals come from?

I believe that they are part of our innate emotion system, which we have inherited as part of our evolutionary history.

Having this system and this set of appraisals and psychological themes was helpful in that evolutionary past to ward off threats, fight for food, obtain and keep mates, build families and communities – basically to survive.

Moreover, they helped us humans to survive in many situations that required an immediate response or action. Emotions and the appraisal system helped us respond in those situations with minimal conscious awareness.

For example, what do you think would happen if you started drinking spoiled milk and had to think through the risk-benefit ratio of doing so once you perceived the nasty taste?

By the time you thought that through, you would have ingested that spoiled milk and it would be in your system, along with all the other contaminants in there, which would obviously make you sick and/or even bring about death. That wouldn’t be good for survival!

Thank god we don’t go through such time consuming, risk-benefit calculations for many events that have implications for our health or safety. Those with that system survived and remain here today; those without that system were selected out of existence by nature.

The appraisal process is fast! Extremely fast!

And for good reason. It is so fast that scientists still don’t have an accurate accounting of exactly how fast it is (although we have good guesses!). Thus, changing the appraisal process is very, very difficult.

In actuality, we’re all constantly scanning our environment for possible emotion triggers. Much of time, we appraise events and they don’t trigger an emotion; that is, they are not evaluated as possibly requiring an immediate response from us in order to survive. In fact, some may say that our contemporary human life is pretty cushy, where emotions hamper more than they help.

But when something happens that may require an immediate response, the emotion system kicks in, appraising events and other stimuli extremely rapidly and turning on the emotion system in order to act. Just think about a time that you may have been on a sidewalk and abruptly heard a car or bus coming at you.

What about culture and emotion?

Now, although the underlying psychological themes associated with each of the basic emotions are universal and innate, culture still plays an important role in how we adapt our emotion system for daily use.

Yes, there are some events that universally trigger the same kinds of emotions – spoiled milk, snakes, feces, etc. – all kinds of things that are associated with survival regardless of culture.

But cultures also facilitate our learning to associate our innate emotion systems in culture-specific and individually different ways. That’s why the same event can trigger very different emotions in different people – because they have learned to associate different appraisals for those events in their upbringing.

So the next time you think about an emotion, think about not only the specific event that you think triggered it, but the underlying, psychological theme with which your mind evaluated that event.

That’s the real trigger of the emotion.

The post What Triggers Emotions in Humans? first appeared on Humintell.