Category: Emotion

What is your skin saying about your emotions right now?

People are surprisingly accurate at reading emotions from the colour of the face alone — even when the expression doesn’t change, research finds.

Based on subtle changes in the skin colour around the nose, cheeks and chin, we can identify happiness, sadness, surprise and many other emotions.

Happiness, for example, involves red cheeks and temples.

However, the same face, but with a redder forehead, signals surprise.

Disgust creates a blue-yellow cast around the lips and red-green appears at the forehead and nose.

People are able to read these signals automatically, without learning them.

The conclusion comes from a study which draws a novel link between the central nervous system and facial expressions.

The colours on the face are such good predictors that the researchers were able to construct a computer program that could identify human emotions with 90% accuracy, just from facial colours.

Professor Aleix Martinez, who led the study, said:

“We identified patterns of facial coloring that are unique to every emotion we studied.

We believe these color patterns are due to subtle changes in blood flow or blood composition triggered by the central nervous system.

Not only do we perceive these changes in facial color, but we use them to correctly identify how other people are feeling, whether we do it consciously or not.”

For the study people were shown pictures of faces with a neutral expression, but with the colours for different emotions superimposed over the top.

When asked to guess how the person was feeling, people were right up to 75% of the time, depending on the emotion.

They got the emotion right, despite the only clue being changes in the colour of the face.

Man or woman, whatever ethnicity, everyone displayed the same pattern for the same emotion, the researchers found.

Professor Martinez said:

“People have always said that we use makeup to look beautiful or younger, but I think that it is possible that we actually do it to appear happier or create a positive perception of emotion—or a negative perception, if you wanted to do that.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Benitez-Quiroz et al., 2018).

Wise people are humble, recognise that the world is in flux and that people have different views that need to be integrated.

Using the emotions in a balanced way helps people to be wise, research finds.

People who were more wise also reported higher ’emodiversity’, a wider range of emotions.

People reasoned more wisely about their relationships, everyday challenges and even political conflicts when they drew on a wide range of emotions.

The finding contradicts the assumption that the emotions cloud judgement.

When used correctly, the emotions help us reason more effectively.

Wise people are humble, recognise that the world is in flux and that people have different views that need to be integrated.

The conclusions come from a series of studies involving 3,678 people whose reasoning was tested in all sorts of contexts.

The authors write that…

“…a wide range of emotions can contribute to wise reasoning about a given situation, because emodiversity—i.e., the breadth and relative abundance of different emotions—can provide valuable information about the features of the situation and allow for more informed predictions of future actions.”

The study’s authors contrast the characters ‘Spock’ and ‘Yoda’ from the fictional worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars, respectively.

They explain:

“Spock shows little emotional response in the face of adversity, having learned to down-regulate his emotions in line with his people’s historical decision to eschew emotions in favor of logic and rationality.

In contrast, Yoda embraces his emotions and aims to achieve a balance between them.”

The wise should forget about Spock’s emotionless approach, says Dr Igor Grossmann, the study’s first author:

“It seems that wise reasoning does not align with uniform emotional down-regulation, as portrayed by Dr. Spock.

Rather, wise reasoning accompanies one’s ability to recognize and balance a wide range of emotions, as portrayed by Yoda.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Grossmann et al., 2019).

Positive emotions are given the biggest boost by different foods as we age.

The diets linked to mental health change over the lifetime, research finds.

The mood of young people — aged between 18 and 30 — benefits from neurotransmitter precursors provided by foods like meat.

Meat — whether red or white — increases the build-up of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, which both help to boost mood.

However, for those over 30 a different pattern emerged.

Mature adults were in a better mood if they ate foods that boosted their antioxidant levels, such as fruit.

Mature adults were also in a better mood if they avoided things activated the sympathetic nervous system, such as coffee and skipping breakfast.

Dr Lina Begdache, the study’s first author, said:

“One of the major findings of this paper is that diet and dietary practices differentially affect mental health in young adults versus mature adults.

Another noteworthy finding is that young adult mood appears to be sensitive to build-up of brain chemicals.

Regular consumption of meat leads to build-up of two brain chemicals (serotonin and dopamine) known to promote mood.

Regular exercise leads to build-up of these and other neurotransmitters as well.

In other words, young adults who ate meat (red or white) less than three times a week and exercised less than three times week showed a significant mental distress.”

The study involved a survey that was completed by people around the world.

Dr Begdache explained the findings for adults:

“Conversely, mature adult mood seems to be more sensitive to regular consumption of sources of antioxidants and abstinence of food that inappropriately activates the innate fight-or-flight response (commonly known as the stress response).

With aging, there is an increase in free radical formation (oxidants), so our need for antioxidants increases. Free radicals cause disturbances in the brain, which increases the risk for mental distress.

Also, our ability to regulate stress decreases, so if we consume food that activates the stress response (such as coffee and too much carbohydrates), we are more likely to experience mental distress.”

The study was published in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience (Begdache et al., 2017).