Neuroscience
Just as we’re better at recognising people who share our ethnicity, we are also better at interpreting the emotional facial expressions of people from the same ethnic, national, or regional group as ourselves. Pascal Thibault and colleagues at the University of Quebec at Montreal think this has to do with motivation. We identify more with people in the same group as us – that in turn leads us to be more motivated to imagine things from their perspective, thus aiding our ability to interpret their emotions.
To test this idea, they showed 88 participants video stills (see examples above and below) of cats that were showing either aggression, fear, disgust or interest. Regardless of how much experience they had of cats, the participants who said they identified closely with cats were better able to recognise whether the felines were showing fear, disgust or interest.
In a second experiment, 60 participants were asked to interpret the facial expressions of men who were randomly labelled either as basketball players or non-players. For half the participants, the labels were switched, to be sure the crucial factor was how the faces were labelled rather than how they looked. Remarkably, participants who played basketball themselves were better than non-players at recognising the emotional expressions of the men labelled as players. Simply being told that another person was a fellow basketball player enhanced their ability to interpret that person’s emotions.
According to the researchers, the findings suggest motivation plays a big part in our ability to understand other people’s emotions, with practical implications: “…[T]he misunderstanding that sometimes occurs between members of different ethnic groups could be explained in part by the lack of motivation that members of a given group display when trying to decode the emotions of members of the other group”, they said.
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Thibault, P., Bourgeois, P. & Hess, U. (2006). The effect of group-identification on emotion recognition: The case of cats and basketball players. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 676-683.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Of cats and basketball players - how we're better at recognising the emotions of those we identify with
Just as we’re better at recognising people who share our ethnicity, we are also better at interpreting the emotional facial expressions of people from the same ethnic, national, or regional group as ourselves. Pascal Thibault and colleagues at the University of Quebec at Montreal think this has to do with motivation. We identify more with people in the same group as us – that in turn leads us to be more motivated to imagine things from their perspective, thus aiding our ability to interpret their emotions.To test this idea, they showed 88 participants video stills (see examples above and below) of cats that were showing either aggression, fear, disgust or interest. Regardless of how much experience they had of cats, the participants who said they identified closely with cats were better able to recognise whether the felines were showing fear, disgust or interest.
In a second experiment, 60 participants were asked to interpret the facial expressions of men who were randomly labelled either as basketball players or non-players. For half the participants, the labels were switched, to be sure the crucial factor was how the faces were labelled rather than how they looked. Remarkably, participants who played basketball themselves were better than non-players at recognising the emotional expressions of the men labelled as players. Simply being told that another person was a fellow basketball player enhanced their ability to interpret that person’s emotions.
According to the researchers, the findings suggest motivation plays a big part in our ability to understand other people’s emotions, with practical implications: “…[T]he misunderstanding that sometimes occurs between members of different ethnic groups could be explained in part by the lack of motivation that members of a given group display when trying to decode the emotions of members of the other group”, they said.___________________________________
Thibault, P., Bourgeois, P. & Hess, U. (2006). The effect of group-identification on emotion recognition: The case of cats and basketball players. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 676-683.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Embodying Another Person's Face Makes It Easier To Recognise Their Fear
An illusion that provokes a sense of ownership over another person's face has provided new clues about the way we process other people's emotions. Lara Maister and her colleagues used the "enfacement" illusion, in which a person watches a two-minute...
- Facial Emotional Expressions Are Not Universal
From the Bushmen of the Kalahari to the Kalaallit of Greenland, you'll find that people everywhere frown in frustration and smile in delight. Or will you? The universality of human emotions and their expression in the face has become widely accepted...
- Armchair Experts Have Their Limits
Armchair commentators take note: when it comes to predicting whether players are going to make a shot, it really does make all the difference if you currently play the sport yourself. Salvatore Aglioti and colleagues filmed a player attempting to throw...
- Violent Video Games Slow Our Processing Of Happy Faces
Just 15 minutes playing a violent video game can lend a negative bias to the way we interpret people's facial expressions. Steven Kirsh and Jeffrey Mounts at SUNY-Guneseo in New York asked 197 students to play either 15 minutes of the violent House...
- Depression Linked With Ultra-sensitivity To Other People’s Emotions
Depressed people are normally thought of as being somewhat disengaged from the rest of the world, but psychologists at Queen’s University in Canada have found that mildly depressed students actually have a heightened ability to detect other people’s...