Can you pick out a genuine smile? I got a 90% — How about you?

“A true friend is someone that sees the pain in your eyes, unlike the other people who believe the fake smile on your face.” ~Unknown

*Please note: Don’t miss my featured Blog Talk Radio interview with Tiny Buddha founder Lori Deschene at 12:30 PM CST on Monday, February 13!  Click here to listen live, or to an archived recording!

I came upon an article today that reminded me of some research pioneered by the psychologist Paul Ekman, who theorized that people’s ability to not only make faces that reflected their basic emotion, but to also interpret the facial expression of others is biologic, and not something based on social or cultural conditioning or influence.

Ekman determined there were six basic emotions: sadness, happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise.  By combining these emotions, we could form others, such as compassion, rage, boredom, embarrassment, and others.

But how do we go about interpreting these basic emotions in others?  What is the mechanism behind it?  Studies suggest that two areas have been isolated which help us make this determination.  One is the small, almond-shaped structure in the brain called the amygdala.  Studies of people who have had this structure removed to cease epileptic seizures were shown to no longer be able to interpret emotions such as fear or anger in others.

Another study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in 1996 indicated that there were regions of the right side of the brain that allowed for recognition of negative emotions in adults.  The results of the study confirmed, “Of 37 people who had suffered cerebral damage, mainly due to strokes, only those whose injuries involved one of two right-brain areas-one that interprets visual input and one that perceives body states-showed difficulty in recognizing fear and anger in faces.”

Would you like to test your ability to detect one of the basic emotions?  Here’s a link to a quiz called, “Spot the fake smile.”  A fake smile, according to Ekman, is called a “Duchenne smile.”  In this quiz you are shown twenty video clips of people smiling, and it’s your task to spot the smiles which are genuine, and which ones are fake.  I got 18 out of 20 right.  Try it out and let me know how you scored.

Have a great day!

-Victor

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net