Posts

Showing posts with the label facial cues

Want to Know What Someone Feels? Don't Look at Her Face

Guess that's why they get the big money.  But researchers now say that the best way to recognize emotions in others is to -- wait for it.  Listen to them. If you want to know how someone is feeling, it might be better to close your eyes and use your ears: people tend to read others’ emotions more accurately when they listen and don’t look, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Newswise.com reports that, in  a series of five experiments involving more than 1,800 participants from the United States,  individuals who only listened without observing were able, on average, to identify more accurately the emotions being experienced by others. The one exception was when subjects listened to the computerized voices also used in  he study, which resulted in the worst accuracy of all.   In each experiment, individuals were asked either to interact with another person or were presented with an interaction between two ot...

Would You Exclude Someone in a Group Based on His Face? You Probably Already Do

We'd like to think it doesn't matter -- or happen -- but we all exclude people, from time to time. But would you exclude someone based on his facial cues? People are often excluded from social groups. As researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland report, whether uninvolved observers find this acceptable or not may depend on the facial appearances of those excluded, according to newswise.com. The exclusion of cold and incompetent-looking people is more likely to be accepted. Social exclusion - at school, work or among friends - is usually a painful experience for those affected. This behavior also often has a considerable effect on third-party observers: Bullying and ostracism with the aim to hurt the victims are seen as particularly unfair and morally unacceptable. However, in some cases, social exclusion is also perceived as justified. Groups are, for example, more likely to ostracize people who cause trouble or arguments in order to restore the h...

How They See Faces May Positively -- or Negatively -- Influence People with ASD

It doesn't explain why Adam Lanza slaughtered 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary almost two years ago to the day, but a new study has found that autism changes the way that people with the disorder see faces. The way people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) gather information – not the judgment process itself – might explain why they gain different perceptions from peoples’ faces, according to a new study from Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies and the University of Montreal, as reported by newswise.com. "The evaluation of an individual's face is a rapid process that influences our future relationship with the individual," said Baudouin Forgeot d'Arc, lead author of the study. "By studying these judgments, we wanted to better understand how people with ASD use facial features as cues. Do they need more cues to be able to make the same judgment?"  When photographic images of neutral faces were presented to two groups, the j...