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...