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Universal or Just Deceptive Emotions?

We spend a fair amount of this blog discussing the role of universal emotional expressions, but not everyone agrees.

Some emerging research, such as a recent study by Drs. Carlos Crivelli and Alan Fridlund, has begun to challenge some fundamental ideas related to the concept of basic emotions. This research questions whether facial expressions reflect emotions at all but instead reflect intentional social action.

For example, Dr. Crivelli has spent months interacting with indigenous groups like the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea and the Mwani of Mozambique. When many of these people are shown basic emotion expressions, Dr. Crivelli found that they declined to identify those expressions with emotions.

Instead, a smile was described as “laughing” or as a feeling of being in “raptured enchantment.” Dr. Crivelli noticed that these referred not to emotions as much as to behaviors and actions. He found similar results when replicating these analyses among the Himba people of Namibia or the Hadza in Tanzania.

Moreover, a 2017 meta-analysis found that often facial expressions are not representing the emotion we would thing they should be, based on basic emotion theory. Instead, co-author Dr. Rainer Reisenzein suggested that openly expressing one’s emotions could “[put] us at a disadvantage” in an evolutionary sense.

Dr. Fridlund emphasized a similar point, stressing that emotions have strategic social motivations. Perhaps individuals are not revealing inner states but are trying to convey a specific state to you, so that you will act accordingly.

While many would see this research as a challenge to the idea of basic emotions, this isn’t really the case. Instead, it just underscores the importance of both incorporating microexpression analysis and deception detection. Microexpressions are actually just basic emotional expressions that are displayed almost instantaneously.

These microexpressions are the key to seeing through the sort of deceptive expressions that the aforementioned studies discuss. Certainly, your peer may be using a facial expression in a way that doesn’t just display the emotion in question, but their emotion is not completely concealed. It comes out in the form of a microexpression.

Still, this new cultural research helps elaborate on two complexities. First, many researchers may take for granted that the presence of expressions as showing underlying emotions. Such perceptions must take into account the possibility that others’ expressions are being used instrumentally.

Second, we must revisit the perennial issue of how to contextualize basic emotions into the admittedly distinctive manifestations that we see across cultures. Instead of speaking in terms of underlying emotions, some indigenous groups can simply describe the behaviors. What does this say about deception in those cultures? About emotional openness?

These are even more reasons to see what Humintell can do to better let you read microexpressions and to allow us to incorporate cultural differences into our people reading.

The Science of Gratitude

Why do we feel gratitude anyway?

Gratitude seems like an incredibly central emotion in our interactions with other humans, and there is good reason for that! In past blogs, we have written about how critical cultivating gratitude can be in promoting healthy relationships and even in ensuring good physical health. Building on this research, a new study by Dr. Hongbo Yu and his team dug deeper into the neurological mechanisms at play and the fundamental role of gratitude in interpersonal interactions.

In this groundbreaking research, Dr. Yu and his team sought to use MRI machines to map out which regions of the brain were particularly active while the participant was feeling gratitude.

While past work has also sought to do this, this project was novel in trying to map out antecedent emotions, such as prosocial and reciprocal behaviors and cognitions, as well as the behaviors following feelings of gratitude.

In order to better understand these concepts, they recruited a series of 36 participants and asked them to engage in a series of activities. In each of these, participants were asked to subject themselves to a brief electric shock in exchange for receiving a monetary bonus.

Following this initial stage, participants underwent brain scans to map out relevant brain regions before engaging in “help-receiving tasks.” Here, participants were paired with fellow subjects. While one individual was to receive mild pain, their compatriot was asked to spend money to relieve their other’s suffering.

Importantly, participants were asked to decide exactly how they would behave while still undergoing the MRI brain scans. This tracked cognitions like whether they planned to help, but also the reaction of a participant to learning that they will be relieved of the pain by a stranger.

In analyzing the results, Dr. Yu’s team was able to compile a computational model that can help guide further research into this emotion. Moreover, the processes identified are not necessarily tied to gratitude alone but could be further connected to other cognitive mechanisms.

This leads to the exciting possibility that this study is a building block into larger attempts to map out cognitive processes and emotions by the neurological activity at play. Certainly this could have widespread ramifications for the study of psychology and on efforts to better read people.

The authors conclude by expressing hope that this study “serves as a role-model for investigation of the neurobiological basis of other complex emotions and their significance in social-moral life.”

But how is this helpful to better reading people? First, the study helped better understand how emotions are constructed and then converted into behavior. By understanding these processes, researchers are better able to apply neurological insights to everyday behaviors.

Universal Olympian Triumph

The Olympics are also an incredible insight into the universality of emotional expressions.

In addition to being an amazing showcase of emotions, as we discussed last week, the Olympics also demonstrate the unity of human emotions across cultures. Given that the Games bring athletes together from all over the world, they present a prime study in the differences and similarities between differents expressions of emotions.

Followers of this blog should be familiar with the phenomena of universal basic emotions but also with the reality that cultural differences do complicate the process of reading people. Gestures, eye contact, and social cues all vary, so we cannot rely on excellent people reading skills in one culture to replicate our abilities in other situations.

However, as Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto maintained in a radio interview last week, there are some emotions that span such cultural divides. One of these is the expression of triumph, which is so frequently showcased by Olympic victors.

As mentioned last week, Dr. Matsumoto’s research has found that, upon winning the gold, Olympic athletes almost invariably showcase the same emotion: triumph.

Interestingly, this is not traditionally included as a universal basic emotion, but all the same, Dr. Matsumoto found it again and again in pictures and videos of triumphant competitors. He noted: “When we studied pride, there was always something gnawing at me because some of the expressions that were previously labeled pride just didn’t make that much sense to me.”

Eventually, he and fellow Humintell researcher Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang labeled this emotion triumph, contending that “Triumph has its own signature expression that is immediate, automatic and universal across cultures.” Instead of the subtle, self-satisfied smile that marks pride, triumph is displayed in a jubilant, almost aggressive fashion.

In the aforementioned radio interview, Dr. Matsumoto pointed out that this emotion holds even in cultures where dominance and triumph are generally deemphasized in favor of humility, and it can be seen amongst non-human primates and even other animals as well. This all suggests a deep evolutionary and biological root behind the emotion of triumph, which we have also noted with other emotions.

Moreover, its manifestation is not just limited to a facial expression. Triumph is often accompanied by a sort of “victory stance,” with arms raised and head held up high. This holds for victors from all over the world, emphasizing past research that found similarities in gestures universally across cultures.

Last week we emphasized that the Olympics are a great time to focus on trying to read expressions, because they are particularly pronounced in both defeat and victory. But reading facial expressions is only one facet of successfully reading people. This week, we would like to encourage you to look at gestures. Can you note the features of a triumphant stance? Does anything else jump out at you?