Body Language: A Better Approach to Revealing Emotions

Helen Holmes January 17, 2013

By looking at a person’s face, you could identify if he or she is sad, happy or angry. But if you want to know their genuine feelings, you better learn how to read their body language, a new research suggests.

For their study, a team of scientists from Princeton University conducted a series of experiments that involved identifying emotions such as loss, victory, joy and grief based on body language alone, facial expression alone, or both body language and facial expressions.

In the first experiment, three groups consisting of 15 individuals were shown images of either the face, body position, or both the face and body. Researchers found that in participants who saw only the face had a 50-50% chance of being correct while those who saw the face and body together scored better.

In the second experiment, photos were edited so that one emotion portrayed by facial expression is placed into the body reflecting a different emotion. For instance, one photo would show a face that expresses victory while his body reflects defeat. In general, participants were able to identify what emotion is being shown based on the body language.

In the third test, researchers randomly assigned faces on bodies depicting varying emotions. And just like the first and second experiments, the participants favoured body language more than the facial expression in creating their judgement.

For the fourth and final experiment, body language ruled despite differences in the facial expressions.

Body language – and indicator of intense emotions

The findings countered the popular theories claiming that facial expressions are the universal indicators of emotions. According to the researchers, body language reveals a lot of information that people aren’t necessarily aware of.

As a matter of fact, information brought by facial movements may be very unclear at certain instances, the researchers suggest. According to them, the intricacies of facial expressions become lost when emotions reached certain intensity – like the volume of the stereo speakers that become completely distorted when increased to its max.

Alexander Todorov, the study senior author and a professor of psychology at Princeton argued that most people believe facial expressions convey whatever is in the person’s mind. However, if all other contextual clues are removed, it would be difficult to determine their real emotions.

Their study was published in the journal Science.

Dear Readers,

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Source of this article:

Body Cues, Not Facial Expressions, Discriminate Between Intense Positive and Negative Emotions