PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Your face says it all? Not so fast

Your face says it all? Not so fast
2014-03-05
(Press-News.org) It's a concept that had become universally understood: humans experience six basic emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise—and use the same set of facial movements to express them. What's more, we can recognize emotions on another's face, whether that person hails from Boston or Borneo.

The only problem with this concept, according to Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Lisa Feldman Barrett, is that it isn't true at all.

For nearly two decades, Barrett has been tracking down the research that established this misconception and wouldn't rest until she actually performed the experiments to disprove it.

In two research papers, recently and soon to be published in the journals Psychological Science and Emotion, respectively, she's finally done exactly that. The new research calls into question the very foundations of emotion science. As Barrett found, "Emotions are not universally perceived. Everything that's predicated on that is a mistake."

Here's how the falsity came to be understood as fact. In the 1970s, a young psychologist named Paul Ekman traveled to Papua New Guinea to test whether emotions were universally experienced and expressed as he suspected. To test his hypothesis, he looked at whether people recognized the same emotions in facial expressions around the world. Was a scowling face always classified as angry regardless of the observer's cultural background? A pouting face as sad?

He showed Americans, as well as people in the remote south seas island who'd had little exposure to Western culture, a series of photographs depicting caricatured expressions and asked his subjects to match the faces to one of six emotion words or stories depicting emotional scenarios. No matter where they came from, Ekman's subjects saw the same emotions reflected in the same photographs.

But Barrett knew from her own research that context plays an enormous role in the way we perceive each other's facial expressions. She wondered whether the constraints that Ekman put on his subjects—asking them to match images to finite categories and rich stories about emotional events rather than freely sort them at will—might in fact create the result he expected to find.

Enter Maria Gendron, a post-​​doctoral researcher in Barrett's lab. In the fall of 2011, Gendron and a few other members of the team boarded a plain to Namibia, then hopped in a Toyota 4x4 for an hours long, off-​​road ride to one of the most remotely situated tribes on the continent. The Himba, Gendron said, were as little acclimated to Western culture as she could find.

She spent the next 18 days—and then another 20 during the spring of last year—sleeping in a tent atop the car by night and searching for universal emotions by day. She didn't find any.

Gendron looked at both facial expressions and vocalizations, hypothesizing that if emotion truly is universally recognizable, the medium of expression shouldn't matter.

First Gendron gave her subjects 36 photos of faces (six people posing each of six expressions) and asked them to freely sort the photos into piles based upon similar facial expression.

"A universal solution would be six piles labeled with emotion words," Barrett said. "This is not what we saw." Instead the participants created many more than six piles and used very few emotion words to describe them. The same photo would end up in various piles, which the subjects labeled as "happy," "laughing," or "kumisa," a word that roughly translates to wonder.

The vocalizations fared no better. This time, Gendron asked people to freely label the sounds. Again, few emotion words were used. The same sounds seemed gleeful to some subjects and devastated to others.

Finally, Gendron and Barrett repeated the experiment back in Boston, so they could compare the results to a group living in Western culture. The results were significantly different. "The participants in Boston were able to label the expressions with the expected terms but fared better when the words were provided as part of the task," Gendron said. This indicates that what were assumed to be "psychological universals" may in fact be "Western"—or perhaps even "American"—cultural categories, she said.

INFORMATION: END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Your face says it all? Not so fast Your face says it all? Not so fast 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

B-cells aggravate autoimmune diseases

B-cells aggravate autoimmune diseases
2014-03-05
This news release is available in German. Scientists in Freiburg may have discovered a fundamental aggravating factor in autoimmune diseases. If B-lymphocytes lack the protein PTP1B, the cells will become hyperactive for stimulatory signals and can thus promote an autoimmune attack. This study offers an additional explanation to how B-cells regulate an immune response. In Germany, approximately 800,000 people suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. In this progressive disease, a person's own immune system attacks and destroys connective tissue. However, the most important ...

With flip of wrist, interventional radiologists treat uterine fibroids

With flip of wrist, interventional radiologists treat uterine fibroids
2014-03-05
FAIRFAX, Va.—Interventional radiologists have devised a new way to access a woman's fibroids—by flipping her wrist and treating via an arm not groin artery—to nonsurgically shrink noncancerous growths in the muscular wall of the uterus. Researchers found this to be less painful and traumatic for women, allowing them to immediately sit up and move after uterine fibroid embolization (UFE)—with no overnight stay, according to a March article in the Society of Interventional Radiology's flagship publication, the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology. "Improving ...

When disaster strikes: Safeguarding networks

When disaster strikes: Safeguarding networks
2014-03-05
WASHINGTON, March 5, 2014–Disasters both natural and human-caused can damage or destroy data and communications networks. Several presentations at the 2014 OFC Conference and Exposition, being held March 9-13 in San Francisco, Calif., USA will present new information on strategies that can mitigate the impacts of these disasters. New Algorithm Finds Safe Refuge for Cloud Data Much of our computing these days, from browsing websites and watching online videos to checking email and following social networks, relies on the cloud. The cloud lives in data centers – massive ...

A wristband for a different kind of cause -- environmental health

2014-03-05
From "Livestrong" to "Purple Paws," trendy wristbands have come to represent causes from cancer to ending cruelty to animals. Add a new wristband of a different sort: one that could close the loop on determining the potential disease risks of exposure to substances like pesticides. Scientists reported the development in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Kim Anderson and colleagues note that people breathe, touch and ingest a mix of many substances at low levels every day. But figuring out if natural and synthetic compounds can lead to disease is difficult. ...

Hop leaves -- discarded in beer brewing -- have substances that could fight dental diseases

2014-03-05
Beer drinkers know that hops are what gives the drink its bitterness and aroma. Recently, scientists reported that the part of hops that isn't used for making beer contains healthful antioxidants and could be used to battle cavities and gum disease. In a new study in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they say that they've identified some of the substances that could be responsible for these healthful effects. Yoshihisa Tanaka and colleagues note that their earlier research found that antioxidant polyphenols, contained in the hop leaves (called bracts) ...

Adolescent relationship violence has mental health implications for victims, perpetrators

2014-03-05
WASHINGTON, DC, March 5, 2014 — Described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as "physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse," intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious public health issue affecting millions of people in the United States. New research from sociologists at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) shows that adolescents and young adults who perpetrate or fall victim to IPV are more likely to experience an increase in symptoms of depression. Titled, "Intimate Partner Violence and Depressive Symptoms During ...

Pigment or bacteria? Researchers re-examine the idea of 'color' in fossil feathers

2014-03-05
Paleontologists studying fossilized feathers have proposed that the shapes of certain microscopic structures inside the feathers can tell us the color of ancient birds. But new research from North Carolina State University demonstrates that it is not yet possible to tell if these structures – thought to be melanosomes – are what they seem, or if they are merely the remnants of ancient bacteria. Melanosomes are small, pigment-filled sacs located inside the cells of feathers and other pigmented tissues of vertebrates. They contain melanin, which can give feathers colors ...

Rough surface could keep small electronic parts from sticking together

2014-03-05
When a piece of gift-wrapping tape sticks to itself, it's frustrating, but when small parts in a microgear or micromotor stick together, an electronic device may not work well, if at all. Scientists now report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that rough zinc oxide coatings can prevent tiny silicon parts from adhering to each other. The study could accelerate the development of even more advanced, high-performance electronics and small sensors. Xinchun Lu and colleagues explain that adhesion is a big concern when designing very small silicon-based machines ...

Synthetic spider silk strong enough for a superhero

2014-03-05
Spider silk of fantastical, superhero strength is finally speeding toward commercial reality — at least a synthetic version of it is. The material, which is five times stronger than steel, could be used in products from bulletproof vests to medical implants, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society. Alex Scott, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that spider silk's impressive strength has been studied for years, and scientists have been trying to make a synthetic version of the super-strong ...

Lung transplantation: A treatment option in end-stage lung disease

2014-03-05
In the past five years, the number of lung transplantations carried out has increased by about 20%. In the end stage of various lung diseases, transplantation is the last remaining option for treatment, and it can both prolong life and improve its quality. Marc Hartert and colleagues have studied how patients do after a lung transplant, and their review appears in the current edition of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2014; 111(7): 107–16). What they found is that deaths in the 90 days after an operation for lung transplantation have gone down ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

[Press-News.org] Your face says it all? Not so fast