Go to Paul Ekman's FACE Training website http://face.paulekman.com/default.aspx and browse the content. You can also review his main website http://www.paulekman.com/
For this post, scroll down to the bottom of the FACE Training site and complete the METT Demo. What was it like for you? How can you relate it to the science of emotion from chapters 11 and 12? How does/might it relate to motivation?
I enjoyed doing the demo although it was shorter than I wanted it to be! I wanted more practice because I didn’t do so well on the practice section. It’s much harder than it seems to read someone’s facial expression when it is shown to you for less than a second! I thought it was interesting that people could be trained to read expressions in 1/25th of a second. I also thought it was neat that companies use this training technique to better sell things or read people within their professions.
To relate this to chapter 11 and 12, we can look at the training techniques from a biological standpoint. The facial expressions that are presented in this demo represented many of the emotions that the biological perspective takes into account. For example, the demo used anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, contempt, and surprise. Because we know that Ekman designed this training we know that it is based off his theory of universal facial expressions. Ekman’s theory is heavily influenced by biology as compared to cognition therefore we know he believes emotions are innate. We can see through this demo that similarities emerge in the way the facial muscles change in relation to a specific emotion.
This face training relates to motivation because emotions, according to chapter 11, are directly tied to motivation in that they are an actual type of motive. Emotions work to energize and direct behavior just like all other motives. If we can read other people’s emotions we may end up being able to see what they are motivated by and even what their motivation will direct them towards next. This is advantageous to sales people and anyone else who has a job where it is important to understand others. Moreover, some researchers actually believe emotions “constitute the primary motivational system” and that if emotion didn’t exist then neither would motivation. Another view suggests that emotions actually reflect the status of our other motives. In other words, our emotions reflect how satisfied or frustrated our other motives are.
So I was pretty terrible at this. I was just so sure my computer was not working correctly because at first I couldn't even tell that the picture was changing at all. I got 40% the first time I took it and 40% the second time as well! The main concept for this was that people often try to conceal their emotions in their facial expression. But there are often "micro-expressions" that take place. With enough practice, people can learn to detect these micro expressions even when only seeing this for 1/15th to 1/25th of a second! This is often used in delinquent situations to figure out if an emotion is being concealed. It unfortunately doesn't explain why that emotion is being concealed. Thus, it would be hard to use this for any evidence-related purposes because it doesn’t provide that explanation. This is also used with medical professionals as well. But it was very hard for me because I could not tell at all what the face looked like that flashed on the screen.
The practice demo used anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, contempt, and surprise, which are very basic emotions discussed in chapter 11 and 12. These are basic emotions that are pretty universal. As the book discussed, there are many different emotions, but these are the basic ones that are seen in many places. It helps medical professionals to better read people because they can see these hidden or repressed emotions on that person’s face. Facial expression was discussed in the book as a communicable aspect of emotions. People express their emotions in different ways, and each emotion has a corresponding facial expression as well. If a person was depressed in their life but wanted to hide it, when talking about certain subjects they may show these micro-expressions and that medical professional would be able to better read their emotions. Also, doctors might be able to relate increased blood pressure and heart rate with certain emotions as well, since these are the biological aspects of emotion. By doing this they could react in ways that will help that person become motivated to take part in adaptive behaviors to change their sad emotions. Since specific emotions are linked with physical aspects of the body as well, it’s important for medical professionals to be able to read and diagnose whether or not emotions are playing a role in a person’s overall health and well-being.
Being able to read someone’s emotions can lead to being able to determine different motivational patterns they may take part in. This would potentially help us with predicting possible future behaviors. This might help in areas such as delinquency and crime so that watching for certain behavioral patterns coming from emotional cues, we may be able to predict their next move and prevent various situations. Overall, this site related to concepts dealing with facial expression and motivation with emotions.
Once I got the hang of this, it was relatively easy and I enjoyed it. I was really surprised at first how quickly the expression flashes, so it was difficult to me the first time to process the expression that quickly. Once I had sort of prepared myself however, I was surprised how easy it was to distinguish the expression after seeing it for less than a second. It amazes me how easily and effectively the brain is able to process and interpret varying expressions. It is even more impressive then that with enough training people are able to detect the emotions after as little as 1/25th of a second.
Both the textbook and the practice demo pertained to the universal emotions; fear, anger, disgust, happiness, and sadness. It is worth mentioning though that they seem to disagree in the sense that the demo includes contempt and surprise, while the textbook lists interest. Paul Ekman, who designed this demo, is discussed in our textbook, as he hold a biological perspective on emotions. This means that he believes that emotions are limited to several universal emotions, and that these emotions are "products of biology and evolution." This is in contrast to the cognitive perspective that believes any number of emotions can be expressed by the same physiological reaction, thus allowing for many more possible emotions. When comparing cognitive and biological views, it is much like discussing whether the chicken came first or the egg. The biological view suggests that we recognize our fear, which causes the biological responses of an increased heart rage and a decreased skin temperature. The cognitive view on the other hand suggests that we recognize an increase in heart rate and a decrease in skin temperature, which our brain recognizes this is fear.
Emotions are tied to motivation in the sense that individuals are driven to engage in behaviors that make them experience positive emotions, while they are driven to avoid things which will cause negative emotions. In terms of the METT demo, being able to recognize emotions is important to be able to recognize the motivations of others. If one is able to read and understand another's emotions, they are better able to understand the motivations that drove those emotions.
The website based on face training by Paul Ekman analyzes micro expressions to further develop understanding of our environment and the people in it. The METT Demo was very interesting to me. At first I didn’t quite get much out of it but after further readings I began to understand it more. Each expression is only from 1/15-1/25 of a second, but each expression still has the same meeting and affect on a person and a direct relation to emotion. The idea of micro expressions can be highly related to the science of emotion and motivation. From what we have learned in class motivation is present in each action we do and is based on our humanistic needs. An expression is symbolic to how a person reacts or relates to a certain event. Emotion is a multidimensional phenomenon that contains direct agents of purpose according to chapter 11 from our text. Each emotion is goal directed and explains why we have emotion. Emotions relay how we adapt to a situation and at the same time motivate a direct behavior. The chapters dissect the past theories and what the primacy factors into emotion, however either way emotions mean things and that is what this site focuses on.
The practice tanning shows an example of the main emotions including; happy, sad, surprised, angry, contempt, fear, and disgust. The emotions are feedback based on reactions from ones personal interpretation of a situation. The idea of only having certain emotions intrigues me, because I saw emotion as complex. This past chapter has simplified emotions into main categories. Having to see the emotions and immediately categorize them helps me to understand my surroundings. This sight focuses on the idea of seeing emotions that a natural or trying to be hidden to understand how a person truly feels. Chapter 12 helped me to understand the biological aspects to emotion. The first viewing of the man on the sight with two examples of expression took me back to when I was reading the first chapter and stimulating my expression with the exercise in the first paragraph. It is interesting how our body adapts and certain movements of the face immediately trigger a biological response. I would like to learn more about facial expression and feedback after this assignment. The text categorizes emotions frequently yet states ever emotion is unique.
This skill could be very useful to anyone. Understanding others and picking up on social skills can help a person advance in almost every aspect. Seeing true natural feeling and being able to pick up on them would help a person to directly interact with a person on a whole different level. When I think of how many times I feel something different then what I am exposing it seems to be multiple times a day. If someone could pick up on that split second expression and understand my true emotion they might create a whole new interaction that had never happened previously.
Key Terms: emotion, motivation, micro expressions, goal, behavior, biological response, feedback. Facial expression, Basic emotions, agency,
I thought this demo was kind of fun! The first time I took it I didn’t do so well because I didn’t expect the faces to move that quickly. It was hard for me to tell which facial expression was fear and which one was surprised. I took the demo a second time to try to improve my score and I got a score of 100%. I think it is really interesting that people can detect emotion in just 1/25th of a second.
The text book and the demo were all about the emotions fear, surprise, anger, happiness, sadness, and disgust. Paul Ekman designed this demo and is also talked about in chapter 11. Ekman says emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations, and can occur automatically/involuntarily. He also believes that biology-rather than learning, social interaction, or socialization history- lies at the causal core of emotion. Unlike Ekman, Richard Lazarus argues that without an understanding of the personal relevance of an event’s potential impact on personal well-being, there is no reason to respond emotionally.
Emotion is tied in with motivation because emotions function as one type of motive. People want to engage in activities that leave them with positive emotions and avoid activities that leave them with negative emotions. Reading facial expressions can help us understand what motivates other people. Noticing a person with negative emotions like fear or anger can act as a warning signal.
Dr. Paul Ekman’s emotion training was very interesting. At first I was not quite sure what the whole idea behind it was until I read further into why he developed it. I did not do too well on the practice test myself. I only got forty percent correct, but I did already start to improve with the last couple of faces I saw. I kind of wish the video had a little more explanation to it so that I may have understood what was going on a bit better than I did. Overall, it was very interesting to try to decipher the emotions only after briefly seeing the facial expression.
This training relates to chapters 11 and 12 because it shows the social side to emotions. Facial expressions are how others determine what another person’s emotion may be. This is a form of nonverbal communication of emotions. Chapter 11 talks about the basic emotions that everybody starts off with when they first show emotion. The emotions are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, joy/happiness, and interest. These basic emotions for the most part went along with the emotions from the facial training. Other guidelines that make these emotions basic are that they come from the same circumstances for everybody, they are unique and distinctive when expresses, and they start a predictable pattern of physiological responses (p.313). The facial expressions that go along with each of these basic emotions are a very social component. They can influence how people interact with one another and also create or wreck relationships. Overall, these chapters show that the facial training is a powerful thing and can really help with figuring out how a person is socially interacting with others emotionally.
Motivation can be related to this facial training because, according to chapter 11, emotions are connected to motivation. Technically emotions are a type of motive because they energize and direct behaviors just like motives do. Another reason they are connected is because emotions can show if someone is adapting well or badly just by signally if they are moving towards a goal or failing. These are two ways that emotions are linked to motivation. The emotions that were shown for a brief amount of time for the training were energizing and directing me to choose a certain emotion to go along with the expression. I would see the expression real quick and already be motivated to choose one basic emotion over another. In the end, I believe this training can become a very helpful way for anyone to be able to distinguish emotions quicker and show that expression are a big motivator in showing emotion.
I thought that browsing Paul Ekman’s FACE Training website as well his main website proved to be very interesting. Completing the METT demo was a fun activity, and I was impressed with myself because I scored 100% on the practice quiz. I would have been happy if the activity were longer because it was so fun and interactive. The fact that this type of training is actually used in real life to detect incongruity between what someone says and his or her initial, split-second facial expression is pretty neat. It is crazy how fast a facial expression can be analyzed and interpreted.
The METT demo activity can definitely be related to what was learned about the science of emotion from Chapter 11 and Chapter 12. For instance, it gave us an insight as to what some basic emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, contempt, fear, disgust) universally looked like. If looked at from a biological perspective, with an emphasis on primary emotions, each primary emotion is associated with a corresponding facial expression (p.310). Ekman himself proposed this, and he believes that basic emotions are products of biology and evolution. From a cognitive perspective, on the other hand, complex emotions are emphasized. Regardless of what supporters from either perspective believe, basic emotions are agreed to be innate rather than acquired or learned through experience or socialization, they arise from the same circumstances for all people, they are expressed uniquely and distinctively, and they evoke a distinctive and highly predictable physiological patterned response (p.312).
According to the textbook, emotions are, in part, biological reactions to important life events (p.330). Discrete patterns of the facial musculature, or facial feedback, play into these aspects. The facial feedback hypothesis states that emotions are sets of muscle and glandular responses located in the face (p.336). Feedback from facial behavior helps us understand what emotion is being activated. All of the basic emotions have recognizable facial expressions. This allows us to be able to analyze an emotion based on the different facial musculature patterns and, ultimately, facial feedback. This can be related to the METT Demo because it had us go through a series of different facial expressions and then label each one as being one of the listed basic emotions. Facial musculature and facial feedback both play a large role in being able to do that.
If we were taking the standpoint from the cognitive perspective, though, things like emotion differentiation and emotion knowledge could be related to the METT Demo. According to the textbook, emotional differentiation is how people experience different emotions to the same event (p.351). Emotion knowledge is our ability to discriminate shades within a single emotion through experience in different situations (p.352). Because I have learned how to be proficient in both emotion differentiation and emotion knowledge, the METT Demo was probably easier for me to complete than it was for someone who was less proficient in both of those areas.
The METT Demo also relates to motivation. This is because of the fact that emotions are a type of motive that energize and direct behavior (p.301). They also serve as an ongoing “readout” system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going (p.302). People are energized to direct their behavior towards positive emotional experience, whereas they are energized to avoid aversive and negative emotional experience. All emotions, though, are beneficial to individuals in the sense that they provide some motivational aspect. The textbook also states that if you take away the emotion, you take away the motivation (p.302). Therefore, motivation and emotion obviously go hand-in-hand.
All in all, I thought that this was a very fun and insightful activity. I am excited to cover the topics from Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 more in-depth in class and to learn what’s next to come!
Terms: incongruity, facial expression, emotion, basic emotions, biological perspective, primary emotions, cognitive perspective, complex emotions, facial musculature, facial feedback, emotion differentiation, emotion knowledge, motivation, motive, behavior, positive emotional experience, negative emotional experience
I thought the METT Demo was very interesting. When it said that you could find out your results in less than an hour I thought that the Demo would take about forty-five minutes. I did not realize that it would take about three minutes! When I was looking at the first face, I did not realize how fast the difference would flash. I had to review it a few times before I got the hang of it. I am not sure the exact process to acing this Demo, but I found if I focused my general attention toward the mouth area (and kept the eye area as the second point of focus), that I was able to guess the right emotion. My computer ended up freezing before I could finish my first Demo, but when I started the Demo up again, and completed it, I got about 80% for my score. It is so interesting to me that we are able to pick up emotions from only a flash of a face. Fractions of seconds allow us to interpret how a person is feeling if they show it on their face.
This demo used the emotions: fear, anger, sad, happy, disgust, surprise, and contempt. From this, the demo wanted to test our level of facial feedback through the movement of facial musculature. The emotions in this demo were discrete emotions because they were patterns of facial behavior. Paul Ekman’s belief about the biological perspective is that emotions are biological because they evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks – he concludes that biology lies at the causal core of emotion.
This relates to emotion because emotions are motivators. If you take away emotion, you take away the motivation. If we are able to interpret and understand other people’s emotions, we are further able to understand their motivation. From this, we would further be able to predict future behaviors of the individual. We can also use emotions to understand what motivators drove the individual to experience the emotion. Being better able to “read” and understand people has a social and cultural advantage to humans. Connecting and relating to others is important and can be obtained by “tuning in to” others’ emotions to understand their past, present, and future motivators. The ability to interpret and understand emotions in fractions of a second would be a phenomenal achievement in understanding the emotions of those around us.
I LOVED this blog assignment because I actually got way into the show Lie To Me about a year or so ago, probably less, when it was on Netflix. I’m pretty sure they cancelled the show, but for those of you who have Netflix should really watch it – some of it (though a bit far fetched) relates to psychology and is very interesting. The gist of the show is about a man who reads facial expressions and body language in order to determine if someone is telling the truth or lying. He has his own company and certain businesses, government agencies, private contractors, etc. hire him on cases to determine the truth. Like I said, it is a very interesting show and I would highly recommend it for people to watch.
With that being said, I really liked the METT video. They feature the exact same exercise on the show so I thought it was very fun to participate, as if I was on the actual show! Unfortunately, I did not do so hot. I am not very familiar with the emotion content, which is what threw me off in the exercise. Don’t get me wrong, I understand what the word means, I just don’t use it in my everyday vocabulary, making me a bit unfamiliar with the term and using it in context.
Finally we read about emotion in this class! I know it has been tied into several, if not all, the chapters we have previously read, but I was very excited that it was the main theme for the chapters. One main aspect this exercise tied in was with chapter twelve and the facial feedback hypothesis. The facial feedback hypothesis states that emotions stem from feelings produced changes in the facial muscles, temperature, and glandular activity in the facial skin. Basically it says the facials we make give us the emotion. I don’t think I completely agree with this theory, but it was very interesting to think about.
Another thing I found interesting in chapter twelve was talking about how facial expressions are the same across cultures. I liked this because this was on the tv show too! Everywhere we go, happy looks the same. Anywhere we go, anger looks the same. I think this is an amazing aspect of our human race. I tried doing the test like the book said using figure 12.6 and actually did pretty good considering the pictures are not the best of quality.
We finally get to look into chapter eleven when we discuss why emotions are tied in with motivation. According to the text, emotions are a type of motive. An example of this would be in chapter eleven when it talks about the functional view of emotional behavior. When we experience a certain emotion from a stimulus situation, an emotional behavior comes with that. This is a coping function. The emotion motivates us to cope by emitting an emotional behavior. The book has an entire chart, table 11.1, that has examples of emotions, the stimulus situation they arise from, the emotional behavior that follows, and the function of the emotion.
Terms:
Facial feedback hypothesis, motive, functional view of emotional behavior, stimulus situation, coping function
I enjoyed the demo of the METT training. It was very interseting. I got 80% on my first try, I think I did pretty good! I didn't realize how fast the faces changed. I only had trouble with one face. Just like the person above me, I noticed that I also looked mostly towards the area of the mouth. I think that the mouth gave away the most. I never realized how quickly we pick up emotions on people faces. It seems like something so basic, but theres actually a lot more to it than I originaly thought.
Fear, surprise, anger, happiness, sadness, and disgust were the emotions that were used in the demo and in the book. Eklman is discussed in the chapter and he states that emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations, and can occur automatically/involuntarily. He also believes that biology is at the core of all emotions. The text also states that emotions/facial expressions come from the same circumstances for everybody, they are unique and distinctive when expressed, and they start a predictable pattern of physiological responses.
Emotion is related to motivation because certain emotions motivate people to do certain things. For example people are motivated to avoid things that cause them to have negative emotions, and they are motivated to do things that cause them to have positive emotions. Emotion, I think can also be a predictor to what motivates people. If someone shows a positive emotion about a certain situation, that most likely means that they are motivated by what they are doing. Being able to read peoples emotions clearly also connects us to others. It makes us be able to relate to someone.
I enjoyed doing this demo. I got 60% the first time I did it. I wasn't prepared for the glimpse to be so short so for the rest of the questions I made sure to not blink because you could easily miss it. I wish this would have been longer because it was definitely interesting to see how many different expressions can mean the same thing.
Emotions are biological reactions and they send recognizable facial, postural and vocal signals that communicate the quality and intensity of our emotionality to others. By smiling, we display to people that we are happy or that we are being polite. We also display emotions that we try to hide, such as biting your lips usually means you're witholding saying something. Some people are sarcastic and are hard to read by their tone of voice, so their emotions being displayed on their face are a clue to see how they truly feel about the situation. Although we all display the same kind of facial expressions to show our emotion, it's interesting to how differently people act to situations. As an example, I have a friend who will cry when she's happy. I barely cry as it is so to see her crying when she is happy can sometimes be annoying, but that's her personality. That's who she is and how she reacts to situations.
This emotion exercise relates to motivation because emotions constitute the primaty motivational system. If you are to remove the emotion, then you will remove the motivation. An example of this is that if you take away air, it produces a strong emotional reaction, such as fear. The terror would be the motivational force to get out of a situation where you had a shortage of air. Lazarus talks about how people bring personal motives into a situation in his cognitive-motivational-relational theory. Cognitive communicates the importance of appraisal, motivational communicates the importance of personal goals and well-being and relational communicates that emotions rise from one's relationship to environmental threats, harms and benefits.
Terms: Emotions, motivation, primary motivational system, emotional reaction, cognitive-motivational-relational theory, personal goals
This was an entertaining demo. Like some other people, I thought my demo wasn't working correctly because of how quickly the expression flashed. Once I clicked on an expression and realized you could then repeat or see the emotion, then I understood. Although I missed the first one, I ended up getting 80% on it. I enjoyed the short exercise though and can see exactly how it relates to chapters 11 and 12.
The METT demo specifically relates to chapters 11 and 12 primary emotions associated with corresponding facial expressions. Obviously these primary emotions (happy, sad, anger, fear, disgust) can be seen by just looking at someones expression for a split second (not even). The only two that weren't mentioned as primary ones in the book but seen on the demo were contempt and surprise. Even these two can be very distinct and are universal. The book states that basic emotions are agreed to be innate rather than acquired or learned through experience or socialization. I also believe this as well. In any given situation, let's say a fearful situation in which someones life is in danger, mainly everybody will react to that situation with fear (they are expressed uniquely and distinctively). But then again it seems to contradict with the term emotional differentiation which is how people experience different emotions to the same event.
One example would be tornados. Some people may experience fear when they hear sirens going off for a tornado warning. Other people, like myself, may experience excitement mixed with fear and surprise. Although in this type of situation I feel mixed emotions, my main one would be fear though. Another example could maybe be more a more simple situation such as receiving a C on a hard test. Some students may feel sad or angered by this grade, while others who thought the test was nearly impossible might be satisfied and happy with the outcome. It's the same situation just different emotions from individuals. I think the whole innate expressions must relate to events that are more serious. Possibly a sudden, unexpected death in the family or just someone in general that you know. It's universal that others would be sad or angered as an emotion of this kind of event.
I find emotions and facial expressions to be very interesting and I'm excited about these chapters. Although facial expressions can be easily read through facial feedback, they can also be deceiving as well. I remember doing a facial expression test when I was freshman in college comparing two people at the same time. We had to be able to distinguish which person was faking their expression and which one wasn't. I don't remember the percentages of my outcome or anyone else's really but I do remember that it was very difficult to tell who's was fake and who's was real and it was distinguished by examining the creases between the eyebrows. The demo said you could tell which emotion represented which facial expression through the mouth and I think this relates to the same exercise just different expressions presented.
The face training demo went by very quickly, and I didn’t do so well. The images flashed so quickly that it was difficult to make out what was going on. The first face was difficult because I was not expecting the image to flash so quickly, but after doing it a couple of times, I kind of got the hang of it when I really concentrated on the flashing image.
This demonstration related to Chapters 11 and 12 and emotion. The first big question is, what is emotion? According to our textbook, emotions are “short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events”. Emotion is very hard to define. Emotion is the psychological construct that unites and coordinates experience into a pattern.
This demonstration was directly related to the facial feedback hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, “the subjective aspect of emotion stems from feelings engendered by (1) movements of the facial musculature, (2) changes in facial temperature, and (3) changes in glandular activity in the facial skin”. This means that emotions are muscle and glandular responses that are located in the face. Emotion is the awareness of feedback from facial behavior. When exposed to external or internal events, there is an increase in the rate of neural firing that is quick enough to activate a subcortical emotion program. The limbic system possesses innate, genetically wired emotion programs. When these programs are activated, they send impulses to the basal ganglia and facial nerve to generate discrete facial expressions. Within microseconds of facial expression, the brain interprets the stimulation. This particular pattern of facial feedback is cortically integrated. This is when the frontal lobe of the cortex becomes aware of the emotional state at a conscious level. Then the whole body joins the facial feedback and becomes involved in the emotion. Facial feedback activates emotion. When an emotion is activated, it is the emotion program, not the facial feedback, that then recruits further cognitive and bodily participation and maintains the emotional experience over time. It is then that the person becomes aware of and monitors the changes in heart rate, posture, etc. Facial action also changes brain temperature, so that facial movements associated with negative emotion constrict breathing, raise brain temperature, and produce negative feelings. Facial movements associated with positive emotion enhance breathing, cool brain temperature, and produce positive feelings.
There are 80 muscles in the face, and 36 have to do with facial expression. There are 8 main facial muscles that are sufficient enough to distinguish between the basic emotions. The upper face has three major muscles, which are the frontalis (forehead), corrugator (beneath each eyebrow), and orbicularis oculi (surrounding each eye). The middle face has two major muscles, which are the zygomaticus (from the corners of the mouth to the cheekbone) and the nasalis (nose wrinkles). The lower face has three major muscles, which are the depressor (draws the corner of the mouth downward), the orbicularis oris (circular muscle around the lips), and the quadratus labii (draws the corners of the mouth backward). Patterns of facial behavior produce different emotions. Different emotions have recognizable facial expression. Anger, disgust, fear, distress, and joy all are recognized. Two more emotions that have a particular pattern of facial behavior are interest and contempt.
Emotion relates to motivation in two different ways. The first thing is that emotions are one type of motive. This means that emotions energize and direct behavior. Emotions constitute the primary motivational system. When you take away emotion, you can take away motivation. The second thing is that emotions serve as a readout system to indicate how well or how poorly personal adaptation is going. Positive emotions signal that everything is going well, reflect the involvement and satisfaction of our motivational states, and are evidence of our successful adaptation to what is going on around us. Negative emotions act as warning signals, telling us that not everything is going well. They also reflect the neglect and frustration of our motivational states, and are evidence of our unsuccessful adaptation to what is going on around us.
My first score was 0. My second score was 100%, but more so that I had associations with the faces used in the demo to the emotion they were meant to portray.
The demo wasn't quite as exciting as I hoped it would be. One of my issues of it is the way the transition is handled. It flashes between one and the other without any real transition as far as the facial muscles are concerned. It's two stills. I get that it's somewhat operating on the principle of people attempting to contain their emotions but all the same, if it were doing that then one would think that it would be better to train people to notice subtle differences that are difficult to conceal. The starting point is as neutral as they can get, and the second still is firmly entrenched in whatever emotion they are attempting to show.
I wonder what the methodology is. In all likeliness the emotions they were supposed to represent were told to them after the first still, as that would be the best way to conduct training of this particular stripe. I note this, because I feel my mind is playing tricks on me the third time through, and few of the emotions listed really strike me as what they are labeled to be. I see tension in the neck of the original still of the anger model that looks to me like preparation for one of the negative emotions. It doesn't apply to the happiness model because you can tell in her eyes she's bored. The disgust model's forehead remains completely static as do her eyebrows and her eyes don't show as much change as I would expect. The sad model looks almost curious in the second shot. His original still has interesting curves flanking his lips that kind of look like he's holding back a smile. The sad one seems surprised or disgusted or somewhere in between. Her teeth aren't right, and neither are her lower eyelids or eyebrows.
To check with some objectively I searched for other pictures. I actually managed to find a Tumblr that had JPGs of the actor Tim Roth, the man who played Cal Lightman in Lie to Me, going through basic microexpressions with breakdowns. I was hoping for a write-up int eh book or possibly pictures of the emotions as another comparison but I didn't find any in chapter 11 or 12. They don't line up well with the expressions portrayed in the demo. The Tim Roth expressions felt closer to the genuine article than what the demo portrayed. I feel arrogant going against the software that is actually used in the FACE training software, but going into this I was intending to buy the software. I'm not so certain after the demo.
The chapters have a lot more information as to where we believe the roots of the emotions come from. I liked the section on basic emotions where they listed criteria, but I'm surprised they didn't mention social context to a greater degree. I would contend that the first of those criteria (That they are innate rather than acquired through experience or socialization) requires a caveat that the way the emotions are shown are different according to social circumstances.
For instance, in the United States, Males used to be taught not to portray fear and sadness as openly even when they feel it and were taught to display anger more openly. It isn't quite as prevalent as it once was but it still exists.
Think of a male who is scared of bugs or mice, or even snakes and tell me that there isn't a social context that points toward peer ostracism. When we change genders, that same ostracism isn't as prevalent when we think of females who display fears toward such things. Likewise, a crying male is more likely to elicit less sympathy than a crying female. I would put money on a crying male being less likely to escape a speeding ticket than a crying female.
Furthermore, when we take someone in a specific role like a police officer or a marine, despite the fact on some level we know them to be people we also hold very different expectations as far as emotional responses than various shades of civilian in terms of fear response.
Emotions are incredibly motivating in the short term. By definition, they don't last much longer than that after all. Unless the emotion is sustained, they're good for jumpstarting a task or aiding in short bursts of productivity but after a certain point it's up to ontological inertia.
Another, somewhat important part of this, and an exception is that repeated repression of emotions lead to shifts in mood states. If an individual continues to choose not to express an emotion, the emotion hangs on them and eventually affects their everyday life even when they may have forgotten the initial event that caused that emotion. It's like failing to express your emotions affect the self-schema. The more you fail to express, the more prominent that particular part of mood repression becomes within your behavioral patterns, the more you that repression begins to feel and it may not match the you of your ideal future self. Even if one doesn't contextualize such things like that to themselves, maybe there's just a part of the mind that recognizes such a thing.
Terms:
Emotion
Microexpressions
Self-Schema
Repression
The demo took me a couple times to understand that the emotions would happen in an instant and then I had to gauge their emotion. After I realized this, then I was able to do the test the right way. Honestly I wasn't as good at this as I was hoping to be, but I think the point of this test was to help you improve on your ability to read faces.
The different choices of emotions that we could pick from were surprise, fear, happiness, anger, sadness, and disgust. The book describes emotions as happening instantaneously and can only last a fraction of a second. These emotions can also happen without us even knowing.
I think that this relates to motivation because it can help us gauge other's motivations when it comes to specific tasks. People only say so much, but their face says much more. This training can help us read people's motivations when it comes to work or other situations where we have to gauge reactions.
At first I could hardly see anything, because the face with emotion would be gone with a blink of an eye. I think ethnicity also affects the accuracy of answers. If there is little exposure to certain races in the past experience of someone, the person would not recognize these unfamiliar facial expression patterns. However, the solution to this problem is simple, as in many other situations of learning through trials. You can simply hit all the buttons for the right one and then memorize the picture. That is what training is all about. Yes, the first score will be awfully low, but the next time you take the same test a full score would be easily obtained.
The first relevant topic in the text could be the number of emotions. Apparently we need to know all the possible variations that can be observed in human. This knowledge would affect how we recognize the facial patterns. Another topic that is obviously related is facial feedback hypothesis. Facial expression affects the intensity of emotion people experience. This feedback mechanism can also be mutual, as described in the social interaction section. In that section the effect of emotional contagion explains how emotion can be passed from one face to another.
Like what the author says on the website, people can either intentionally conceal emotions or repress their feelings without realizing the process. If someone intend to hide the emotion, then obviously we can look into the cognitive process of such motivation to hide. If the emotion is unconsciously repressed, then we would also need to investigate environmental and dispositional factors. These could be natural or social elements in the present situation or past experience. These sources of extrinsic motivation can still affect behavior without the awareness of the person.
I really enjoyed the METT demo on the face training website. The first time I took it I got a 40 percent on the test. I found it extremely hard to look at the expressions on the people’s faces in such a short amount of time. I went back and took it a second time and realized that you really do just need to focus on the mouth just like the introduction video described. I got an 80 percent the second time I took the test, but I do not know it that is because I realize that I need to focus more on the mouth of the person in the picture or because it was the same faces. I could have just remembered which person represented which emotion.
The face training METT demo demonstrated seven basic emotions anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, contempt, and surprise. The introduction video shown before the test did focus on the mouth of the person pictured. Facial expressions are universal which makes them known to everyone all over the world. Meaning you can go anywhere in the world and you will be able to tell if someone is angry, disgusted, afraid, happy, sad, or surprised. The facial feedback hypothesis states that emotions are sets of muscle and glandular responses located in the face. Another thing from the chapter that ties into the face training program is emotional differentiation. Emotional differentiation is how people experience different emotions to the same event. Meaning that some people cry when they are happy while others find that to be a weird reaction.
This could be related back to motivation because people are more likely to be motivated to do something if it there is a positive emotion shown. Meaning that if you see someone have a positive reaction to a situation then you are more likely to want exhibit that same behavior. It also has the opposite effect and if you are to see a negative emotion you are not very likely to do the same behavior.
Terms: Emotion, emotional differentiation, facial feedback hypothesis
I was very interested in the micro expressions, however I thought the practice was incredibly short and not very helpful. I got a 60% the only time I took it, and was kind of confused. I feel like people’s expressions, when they are trying to hide something, they don’t make the full expression that quickly, and it’s more subtle than the training showed. I read the information and everything, and although I don’t disagree, I do not think that it happens quite like the training showed. The training itself was also kind of brief in its explanation, and wish it would have explained a little more.
This exercise related to what we talked about in chapter 12 and 11. We read about facial feedback hypothesis, which basically says that the way our face moves produces our feelings. We also read that facial expressions are universal, and that’s something I learned in my other classes for psychology. What that means is that someone’s facial expression for anger or happiness is the same across the world. It related to chapter 11 as well when it talked about how emotions are related to motivation. We are motivated to do things that make us feel good and happy, and we are also motivated to avoid things that evoke negative emotions.
Terms: Emotion, motivation, micro expressions, facial feedback hypothesis.
From completing the METT demo activity, I realized how difficult it can be to interpret an individual's emotional state when only given a flash of the emotion they are portraying. According to the book, emotion is difficult to define because emotions are multidimensional, meaning that they arise from the interaction of several types of phenomena. I've always thought I've been pretty good at reading emotions, but I discovered that emotions can look very similar based on facial expression with just a few differences that give away the emotion that the person is truly expressing. The demo was helpful because gave me an opportunity to study the similarities and differences of particular emotions in order to decipher what different emotions generally look like. The biological perspective of emotions suggests that basic emotions are universal. I believe this is a concept that the METT training focused on.
In this training, I was able to see the facial feedback hypothesis at play. The facial feedback hypothesis that "the subjective aspect of emotion stems from feelings engendered by movements of the facial musculature, changes in facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in the facial skin." Although we are not able to test the facial temperature or the glandular activity of the facial skin from just seeing a picture, it was still evident that changes in facial musculature serve a large role in the expression particular emotions.
Differential emotions theory can also be seen through the exercise because of specifically one postulate of the theory: "Unique expression: Each emotion has its own unique facial-expressive pattern." The training demonstrated that even though some facial expressions can look similar, there are still unique difference and there are universal patterns of how each emotion is facially expressed.
I found this training to be very interesting and kind of fun. It also gave me a great appreciation to those who decipher facial expressions for a living because of how difficult it can be. It also amazed me that individuals are actually able to read a facial expression that is shown in, quite literally, the blink of an eye.
Terms: Emotion, biological perspective, facial feedback hypothesis, differential emotions theory.
I was really confused when I began the METT demo. I first time I only scored 40%, but after a second try I scored 80%. (This also may have been because the same faces showed the same emotions and I probably remember some from the first test.) Like everyone else, focusing on the mouth was the most helpful trick.
The exercise related to chapters 11 and 12. Emotions are biological reactions that send facial, postural, and vocal signals. These signals are easily recognized, and they communicate the quality and intensity of our emotionality to others (whether we want them to know our emotions or not). By smiling, we display to others that we are happy or polite. We often display emotions that we do not want others to see. By biting our lip, you display that you’re refraining from saying something out loud. Even though our most common facial expressions (happy, sad, contempt, surprise, fear, angry, disgust) are universal, we may react to situations with different emotions than others.
Knowing how to recognize someone’s emotions can be very helpful – especially if they are trying to hide it (repression). They may display their emotion very subtly or quickly before returning their face back to neutral. If we can recognize emotion in this way, we may be able to predict future behaviors. This is because emotions represent the primary motivational system. People want to engage in activities that leave them with positive emotions and avoid activities that leave them with negative emotions. Recognizing facial expressions can help us understand what motivates people. Picking up on a negative emotion such as fear or anger can give us a warning signal of possible behavior about to occur.
Terms: emotion, motivation, repression
When doing the face training, I did not realize how fast the faces where going to flash on the screen. When I did it I got 40%, I only recognized two faces. The faces I recognized were sad and happy. I think this was a good experiment, before I did the facial expression test; I looked at the practice first. It was a short video of how you basically can be making the face facial expression but with a slight difference that facial expression is interpreted as something else. The example online was that the man mad his eyebrows pulled into his nose, like someone would do when they are angry. On one side of the screen, the man looked surprised and on the other half he looked mad. His eyebrows stayed in the same place, it was his mouth movement that made the facial expressions different. I thought this was very interesting; I even looked in the mirror and started doing different facial expressions myself, trying to keep one thing the same and changing something else. I think when seeing this I thought of the part in the book that facial expressions are universal. Meaning that because we have different languages across the world, there is a nonverbal communication that we all understand and that is facial expressions. In chapter 12 the facial feedback hypothesis section, the subjective aspect of emotion stems from feelings engendered by 1. Movement of the facial musculature, 2. Changes in facial temperature, and 3. Changes in the glandular activity in the facial skin. Which means emotion is the awareness of proprioceptive feedback from facial behavior.
Terms: Facial Feedback Hypothesis, Emotion
I thought the demo was fun, at first I thought it was a little short but after doing it I thought that if it had been too long I would have gotten discouraged or lost interest. It surprised me how fast it flashed the persons expression, the first question I actually sat there and was confused on if it had already done a facial expression or if I should keep waiting for it. It also amazes me that people are trained to read some ones facial expression within a 1/25th of a second, that’s just crazy and now Im questioning the thought of if my dad was trained in this field because he can always catch my expressions/ when Im lying no matter how clever I think I’m being.
Looking at chapter 11 motivations can be tied to this demo because emotions linked to motivations because they are an actual type of motive. If we can read or sense some ones emotions then we could possibly assume where their motives are coming from and possibly what their next direction is going to be. This also brings up the question that without these emotions, which I find to be expressed without meaning, we always try to hide our emotions but I feel as if we can never fully cover up an emotion, so without these emotions would there be any motivations, or is it a matter of our motives simply show what our emotional state is.
Looking at a biological standpoint the facial expressions within the demo represent the emotions of the biological perspective; anger, disgust, fear, happiness, etc. which is based of the theory of universal facial expressions, is the way we express our emotions a biological innate that we as humans all share?
This demo was very interesting however it was not what I expected at all. The images flashed so quickly on the screen so it was challenging to guess correctly. At first I thought I was going to be good at this but it turned out I wasn’t at all, I got 40%. When I would freeze the screen it was a lot easier to guess which emotion it was because it wasn’t moving. It’s amazing how we can tell or guess how someone is feeling by simply looking at their facial expression for 1/15 to 1/25 of a second. I was glad to read on the website that some individuals are simply better at this than others. Also these expressions occur because we do not want anyone to know how we really feel, but no one really knows why or how they are concealed.
Our emotions are deliberate, purposeful, and motivate us to take action or to express how we feel. The emotions that were used in the demo were anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, surprise, and happiness; all of them are used by all of us at some point. So it was easier to be able to relate each expression as we typically see them expressed very often. Because our emotions guide behavior our future actions are influenced. As for the individual who sees the expression, they have to react or decide not to react to the individual and how they are feeling.
This relates to motivation because we act based on how we are feeling. For example if I am sad it is likely that I will not act happy or excited when taking part in something. I may choose to not express how I am feeling directly but rater indirectly through micro expressions. Also if we are able to recognize how someone is feeling we are likely to see how they may be motivated to act later on. Overall this demo was very interesting as I had never heard of this concept of micro expressions. It is important that we take into account these expressions because they influence behavior as they motivate an individual to do something.
FACE Training is a rather interesting topic. Never have I really put that much thought into others facial expressions or the facial expression I am giving to others. In taking the demo course and the practice expression identification, I actually scored a 80% which was surprising because I wasn’t sure if I was selecting the right facial emotion from the half second glance I got at it.
The concept of FACE training defiantly ties into the readings in chapter 11 and 12. These chapters in the book talk about the nature of emotion and the different aspects of emotion. In chapter 11, the book talks about how emotions serve as social functions. Emotional expressions are nonverbal messages that communicate our feelings to others. Each emotion has a unique facial expression pattern that displays the emotion that we are internally feeling. Our facial expression communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. As you can see, emotion play a huge role in our lives and being able to interrupted facial expression and emotions like the FACE training is trying to accomplish is important to interaction with others around us. Not only is the facial expression itself important to communicating how we are feeling to others, but the feedback that is received from both the communicator and the recipient plays a key role in how we interoperate different situation and experiences that influence our future interactions.
The book talks about how emotions are what motivates us to partake in different actions such as the emotion of fear may motivated us to flee, or the emotion of being angry may cause us to lash out at someone. Having the ability to know and be more familiar with others facial emotions, as well as your own emotional expressions, like FACE training is trying to accomplish, defiantly relates to motivation in the fact that emotional expression is a key factor in what motivates us. Being to define emotional expressions can help individuals determine why someone decides to partake in a particular event or activity.
This demo was really hard for me! I couldn’t read the emotion quickly enough when they flashed the images at me the first time. When I answered incorrectly, I was much better at determining which emotion was being shown when the image was frozen on the screen instead of just flashing at me. According to the book, I experienced this difficulty because emotions are so complex. Not only do they express feelings, they are defined as “short-lived, feeling-arousal-purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events” (p.301).
The emotions shown in this demo – anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, and fear – are all discussed in detail in chapter 11. These are all basic emotions, which means that they are innate, are the same for people everywhere, are expressed distinctively, and evoke a predictable response. I found it interesting that the training module included surprise and contempt as options, but excluded interest. Interest was the sixth emotion described in the book, while surprise and contempt were not listed with the six basic emotions.
Chapter 12 discussed the facial feedback hypothesis, which I thought could be supported by the FACE Training module. The book tells us that feedback from facial behavior causes us to experience emotion if we are consciously aware of it, and that we can cause an emotional experience by simply moving our facial muscles in a particular way. If I was unsure about an emotion being displayed in the module, all I had to do to figure it out was mimic the facial expression of the person in the picture. By doing this, I was able to determine exactly which emotion the person was showing.
Emotions relate to motivation, in that they help to prioritize our behavior. They affect the way we think, feel and behave, which in turn motivates us to either approach or avoid certain people or environments. Specifically, the emotions of anger, fear, sadness and disgust result from feelings of threat or harm, so these basic emotions help us to fight off or reject the threat or harm. The opposite of these are the positive basic emotions, which include joy and interest. Interest motivates us to approach and explore, while joy encourages persistence and reengagement behaviors.
I thought Paul Ekman’s website on FACE Training was very interesting. It is unbelievable that some people are able to pick up on micro-expressions. Micro-expressions are the brief, 1/15 to 1/20, of a second that people display a facial expression when they try to hide their emotions. I enjoyed participating in the METT training, but found it very challenging. I was not able to pick up on micro-expressions very well; therefore, I did very poorly on the practice session. Whenever the screen switched to the micro-expression, I concentrated on either the eyebrows or the mouth of the individual. Based on what I saw I tried to answer correctly, but the expressions were too fast for me to get an accurate picture of the emotion being displayed. I had to use the freeze frame to be able to identify the emotion.
FACE Training related to chapter eleven and twelve because it deals with the basic emotions of fear, anger, sadness, happy, surprised, disgust, and happy. Paul Ekman is discussed in the text as believing in several universally accepted basic emotions which are biologically determined. Neural circuits in the brain are constantly firing, causing such emotions to be displayed. This is called neural activation. Along with the biological perspective, the text also discussed a cognitive perspective. This asserts that there are more than several basic emotions out that can be displayed. Those who believe in the cognitive perspective also agree that there is more than one emotion that can arise from the same biological process.
Emotions can play a large role in our motivation. The text says emotion and motivation are related in two ways. One, emotions energize certain behaviors. Second, emotions give feedback to individuals, which influence future behaviors (pg.301-302). According to the Differential Emotions Theory, the basic emotions can have different motivational purposes. This theory asserts that motions have their own facial-expression, neural activity, feeling, and motivation. For example, when people have the emotion of anger, they’re facial expressions consist of drawing the eyebrows in and downward, tensing the lower eyelids upward, and firmly pressing the lips together (pg. 339). Anger also produces motivational response, such as hitting other people. In some people, anger motivates them to work harder. From personal experiences, whenever I’m angry, I often feel obligated to lift weights. Sometime anger allows your body to reach higher limits than it would under normal conditions, which is also true of other emotions as well. Other ways emotion can serve as motivators are related to the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. Based on the movements of the facial muscles, changes in the facial temperature, and changes in glandular activity in the facial skin, others can receive feedback from another person. This, in turn, can tell us how well or poor we are performing. Once the feedback is processed, it brings out emotions in us. That emotion then serves as a motivator for future behavior. If a coach is angry at his team after they lose a game, then the players could become angry with themselves, or their teammates because of their performance. This could serve as a motivator to work harder and strive to achieve goals.
Terms: micro-expressions, neural activation, neural circuits, biological perspective, cognitive perspective, Differential Emotions Theory, Facial Feedback Hypothesis, basic emotions
The METT demo was very interesting and cool to do, although it was very short. During the practice session, the first face I had no idea that they flashed the person’s facial expression and then we were supposed to guess it. Initially, I had no idea what was going on. Then, I read the directions on the left side and easily understood what we were supposed to do. I quickly realized that it was harder than what I thought it would be to “read” someone’s facial expression within a second. The first attempt at the practice quiz, I scored a 60%, but I improved the next time and received an 80%. The idea behind this is that people try to hide their emotions in their facial expressions. Unbelievably, some experts are able to determine these “micro-expressions” in around 1/25th of a second. That is incredible!
Through this demo, there are similarities that come forth so that we are able to identify the facial muscles change in relation to a specific emotion. This demo is all based off Ekman and his theory, in which, is influence by biology because we understand that emotions/facial expressions are innate. The basic emotions in the chapters are the ones that were used in the practice demo-anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, contempt, and surprise. These seven expressions are pretty much the universal emotions that surround us as human beings. The concept of facial expression is a communicable aspect of emotions. Everybody expresses emotions in different ways, and with this, each emotion has a corresponding facial expression. In the book, there is a picture of Tiger Woods after hitting a golf ball. There are eighteen others in the photo that are all showing an “interest” facial expression. This is determined by each subject showing micro-expressions that professionals are able to dissect and read into their emotions.
The face training demo is relevant to motivation because of emotions are tied to motivation. Both motivation and emotion can go hand-in-hand. Emotions direct our behavior. For people being able to read emotions, we can then grasp an idea of what triggers them into getting motivated. We might be able to then understand their behavior and how their motivation will direct them. This helps us understand the different motivational patterns that everybody has. With these occurring, we can get a firm idea in what possibly might occur with their future behavior.
The METT FACE training demo was tough. I struggled to pick an emotion the first time the emotions flashed on the screen. It was much easier to choose an emotion once I could freeze the image on the emotion. My score was 40%.
The purpose of this face training is to be able to “see” and “relate” to the people in our environment. While this may seem like a cool thing to some, I don’t know if I love the idea of it for the general population. I believe that most of us have an innate ability to recognize and understand the emotions of others. When we turn relating to others into an analytical science we take away the true aspect of relating I believe. Sitting at a computer looking at facial expressions may help you recognize some basic human emotions but it (at least from the demo) takes away the subjective nature of emotions. At times our sadness may look like typical sadness but other times it may be covered up by something else. If we want to relate to others we should be with others and have a desire to understand them and help them. If we honestly struggle to understand the emotions of someone that we are interacting with…ask them to share what they are feeling. Maybe I don’t have an accurate idea of what this website does but it just seems to turn interpersonal relationships into a science and I think there is a problem with that. Do we just desire to have a one up on others and constantly know their inner most emotions? What is the purpose in having the power to “read” someone? Sometimes, yes, it may be important for a doctor to read his patients (e.g. if he suspects they are lying about an injury and suspects abuse from their sad and dejected emotions) but for most people I don’t think this “training” is worth much. Do we constantly need to analyze someone’s facial expressions to make sure they are not lying to us? I just think this takes interpersonal relationships into another realm.
As the book says though, emotions serve a social function. Our emotions help us convey messages to the world around us. If others are incapable of recognizing our emotions then it is almost pointless to express an emotion. In communicating our feelings to others via or emotions, we sometimes hope to illicit certain response. For example, if we show someone that we are sad we are sometimes hoping to receive comfort from that person. If they are unable to recognize our emotions, however, we will receive no comfort. Interpersonal relationships are a huge part of our lives, and we experience numerous emotions daily. These two things (relationships and emotions) are not separate. With relationships come emotions and through certain emotions we desire and seek out relationships. Therefore, I can understand the purpose behind the face training website but I also do not agree that trying to learn and understand emotions scientifically is the appropriate way to go about understanding human emotions and interactions.
The James Lange Theory of emotion states that our emotions are caused by some sort of stimulus and are displayed as a bodily reaction. So it makes sense that if we can recognize a person’s emotion through their bodily reactions, we may be more equipped to understand what caused that emotional response (i.e. the stimulus) and therefore can work to prevent future occurrences of this emotion (if it is a negative emotion) or to encourage this emotion in the future (if it is a positive emotion).
As the book mentions, emotional expressions seem to be the same cross culturally. Because most emotions are culturally universal, the face training is not only relevant to people of western cultures but also to people from many different cultures. Therefore, if it is a beneficial program, it may be cross culturally accepted.
Throughout our lifetime we gain emotional knowledge. Through interactions with others and through recognizing our own emotions we learn to discern how we ourselves are feeling and what others might be feeling. My personal opinion is that face training is attempting to unnaturally and scientifically speed up this process. Rather than learning from life, it is trying to move the process along. We are not all the same. We don’t all show the exact same emotions and we shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions about what someone’s facial expressions indicate based on what a computer program is telling us that they are feeling. Context plays a huge role in emotion and it should not be neglected. When we turn our relationships and our attempts at empathizing and understanding another human into a scientific interaction, I think we lose real concern for that person and real understanding. Perhaps I am being too harsh of this program….I did only experience a small slice of what it is.
This was really neat, being able to try and identify someone’s emotion. I have seen the show that uses this; it was called Lie To Me. This pretty much is CSI but instead of investigating the crime, the lead character examines people and detects if they lie or not according to their emotional reactions. Making this activity even more fun for me as I am trying to do something that was quite difficult. I scored very low, as the screen flashed so quick I was unable to see what was really going on. If this was a field of study that I could possibly join, I might.
In chapter 11 Reeve discuses and explores our emotions and tries to define emotion itself. The definition Reeve gave was a short lived, arousal phenomenon that helps us adapt context around our lives. Directly supporting the F.A.C.E training Dr. Ekman proposes, as it examines the emotions that may appear for less than a fraction of a second. There are two possible ways that cause emotion: Cognitive and Biological. The biological perspective delves into the neuroscience and defines that emotions arise from genetically endowed neural circuits that regulate brain activity. Making it so that we react before our actual cognitive mind understands so. It is also concluded to be a biological state because usually emotions are hard to understand and explain for people. They also show emotional triggers acted upon through electrical shock causing stimulation of brain activity and facial reaction. The last main reason is emotions are in animals and baby’s; things that do not have cognitive ability. The cognitive argument for showing an emotion is that in order to show an emotion someone has to feel some sort of relevance towards the subject, making it a cognitive thought that triggers the emotion. Another cognitive perspective is the attribution theory which brings to light that post thought of a situation causes the emotion that will be felt.
In chapter 12 the facial feedback hypothesis, is equivalent to Dr. Ekman’s theory. But adds onto it through also identifying temperature of the face and also it is noted to take in gland movement. There are a lot of muscles in the head that might possibly cause the reactions to emotions. By identifying the different muscle types and associating them with specific emotions it could make the F.A.C.E assessment a lot more effective. The forehead also known as (frontalis) is only responsible for the fear emotion and it causes contraction, producing forehead wrinkles. The eyebrows (corrugator) may be triggered by anger, fear and sadness; with the emotion fear the eyebrows rise on the inner corners. The eyes (Orbicularis Oculi) have movements for anger, fear, sadness and joy; With fear the upper eyelids raise while the lower eyelids tense. The last major movement for fear happens in the jaw (Quadratus Labii) with the lips being pulled back. Now that I have identified all the major face movements with fear I am able to more likely see these reactions when talking to people.
Terms: Emotion, Cognitive or Biological, facial feedback hypothesis, frontalis, corrugator, Orbicularis Oculi, Quadratus Labii
I’m a huge fan of Ekman and his controversial work on facial expressions and ‘human lie detector’. While I’m not completely sold on the idea that all of his work is necessarily valid, it does seem to produce results. The Face Training exercises were extremely entertaining and there is no denying that the processes that Ekman uses is heavily anchored in facial and expressive research. Emotion and expression is an area of research that I find very interesting and while I was researching my paper on the effects of personality on emotion, Ekman’s name came up more than a few times; though, in the end, none of his research was able to be used for my purposes. The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that one’s facial expressions can have an effect on that emotional experience. Therefore, the facial expressions expressed can help nurture the emotion being felt, ultimately affecting our behavior. This relationship can be best viewed by the differential emotions theory. The differential emotions theory suggests that every emotion is unique with its own unique expression. These emotions are split up in to sub groups of positive, neutral and negative emotions. These emotions act to motivate the individual in adaptive ways; therefore, emotions motivate the behavior of the person. In summary, a person’s facial expression can affect the emotion itself, and in doing so, can affect the adaptive behaviors being motivated by the emotion being felt. The ability to read other’s expressions is something we do naturally. We have a natural tendency to imitate the facial expressions, vocal expressions and postures of others around them. Emotional mimicry is one of the ways we communicate and relate to one another. In doing the practice demo, I wondered if one could then control our emotions, or at least our expressions (this is something that Ekman has done research on and is what his controversial ‘lie detector’ theories are based on). Emotions involve four aspects: feelings, arousal, purpose and expression. All four have a hand in the emotion being felt and all four have an effect on each other. The book argues that if emotions are biological in nature then we will not be able to control it but if emotions are cognitive in nature then we should be able to control it. I argue that emotions are both biological and cognitive in nature and different emotions lean more towards the biological and some lean more towards the cognitive. I found it very interesting that people can train themselves to identify expressions in 1/25 of a second. If this goes with just facial twitches of an emotion being felt then it seems hard to imagine that one would be able to control the emotion being expressed, no matter how short the expression lasts. Ekman argues that this is what makes his ‘human lie detector’ work because the expression is sent out so quickly that it is difficult to contain it before someone trained can read it. All in all, expression, motivation and emotion are extremely interesting to me and Ekman and his research is equally interesting in itself.
TERMS: facial feedback hypothesis, differential emotions theory, emotion, motivation, adaptive behavior, emotional mimicry, feelings, arousal, purpose, expression, biological, cognitive
I thought that this activity was not at all easy to do! I think that if a context of the emotion was given, for example, if you were in a conversation with that person and they gave you that facial expression for a split second, it would have been a little easier to figure out. However, even when I would "freeze" some of the faces, it was still a little difficult to read their facial expressions. I took a psychological anothropology class last semester and one of the things we discussed were emotions in other cultures. I think that the example in chapter 12 of facial expressions of a New Guinea native shows that while the facial expression of happiness is one of the most easy to recognize between cultures, it is still difficult to identify a lot of other facial expressions. The facial expression the man shows of "disgust" looks to me like he might just have to sneeze. Chapter 12 also discusses if we can voluntarily choose to control out emotions. The old saying of "fake it till you make it" or whenever you get advice to smile because it will make you happy, this chapter discusses that it might not be as easy as that. Some emotions just happen to us, like fear or sadness, those emotions would be difficult to mask. If someone just wanted to feel happy, they would need to expose themselves to a situation or experience that would make them happy. emotions have four aspects, being feelings, arousal, purpose, and expression. These can easily be related to motivation. A feeling can be everything that motivates a person. In Castaway for example, his love for his girlfriend kept him going, he wanted to return to her and he loved her, it helped keep him motivated for survival. Without our feelings and emotions it would be difficult to be motivated to do anything.
This FACE training was really interesting. I was really caught off guard when it started...I thought my computer was messed up! I didn't realize that it was even possible to identify an emotion after seeing it for a fraction of a second. Once I caught on, however, I was able to see the emotion in each face. It was a really cool and interesting way of demonstrating this phenomenon. Rather than just writing it down, I feel that this is one of those concepts that needs to be demonstrated and proven in order for people to believe it. I would have denied the theory if not for this demo!
This demo ties into chapters 11 and 12. Emotions are complex and multidimensional. They are made up of four parts: subjective, biological, purposive, and social. Although none of these parts can actually define emotions. I think of emotions as feelings, because your brain tends to feel the emotion that is represented in each facial expression. For example, if I was sad about something, but I didn't want people around me to know, and I smiled, the people would see the smile and assume I am happy, while my brain will also think I am happy and force a little bit of real happiness to disguise the sadness. When reading about emotions, this demo is a reminder about the complexity of emotions. It is hard to identify emotions sometimes--even when they are shown for more than a fraction of a second! Even then, they could be a mask someone is wearing to prevent people from knowing how they really feel.
This FACE demo and the concepts of emotion discussed in the book relate to motivation because our emotions energize and direct behavior. They also indicate how well or poorly personal adaptation is going. The FACE demo is helping to teach us to read others' facial expressions. By understanding how others are feeling from their emotions, we can decide how they are going to react to a certain circumstance, or generally how they feel about something. For example, if I were to say something mean to someone, and I saw even a hint of anger in their face, I would know to back off because that could mean physical action or yelling. Another example would be if watching a scary movie with someone and they had looks of fear all over their face, I would know to throw them a pillow so that they could scream into it. Overall, this demo allowed me to understand the science and motivation between a facial expression and emotions.
Dr. Ekman’s METT Demo was very interesting. I was really surprised at how fast the facial expressions flashed before me; I was hardly able to see the first one happen. However, I got 80% on my first attempt which was surprising to me. It’s also interesting that some people are highly trained in this specific area and are able to make precise judgments about people’s emotions based on facial expressions in virtually no time at all.
The demo used seven emotions: happy, sad, surprise, anger, contempt, fear, and disgust. For the most part, all of these emotions are discussed in chapter 11 from a biological perspective. These basic emotions are innate and arise from the same circumstances for all people. Basic emotions also evoke distinctive and highly predictable physiological responses. From a social perspective, these emotions allow us to communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships.
According to chapter 12 emotions is linked to motivation. Lazarus labels his emotion theory as a cognitive-motivational-relational one in which cognitive communicates the importance of appraisal, motivational communicates the importance of personal goals and well-being, and relational communicates that emotions arise from one’s relationship to environmental threats, harms, and benefits. Therefore, the argument can be made that our emotions fuel our motivation and have an impact on what we are motivated to do depending on our personal motives.
The face demo was no fun! I was sure that I was going to do well and my psychological need for competence was high! I was bummed that the facial expressions went by so fast, I could never really see what it was. I got a 40%, indicating that I in fact really stunk at this example, and I blame it on the fastness of the pictures! It is incredible to me that some people can successfully read facial expressions that quickly. I thought the trick might be to see which way the parts of the face moved, especially in the eyebrows, like expressed in the example face video. This didn't help me. The face seemed liked it either went up a little, down a little, or to the side, creating no hints to me what it could actually be.
Chapter 11 goes into extensive detail about the biology of emotion and how and why we have emotions. It was interesting to see what great detail goes into emotion! I love to people watch, and this is a great tool for me to have whilst doing that.
Chapter 12 was easier to connect with this particular face study and emotion, as it focused more on the aspects of emotions. Differential Emotions Theory has an emphasis on basic emotions serving different motivational purposes. This theory says that each emotion operates as a system that coordinates feeling, expression, neural activity, and purpose/motivation components. Facial Feedback Hypothesis was also very interesting. It suggests that emotion is our response and/or awareness of proprioceptive feedback from facial behavior. Or in other words, our mind recognizes movements in our facial musculature, different changes in the temperature of our face and when we sweat. This is interesting when having to identify emotions based on the face that one is making. If we see someone getting read in the face, maybe sweating and scrunched up, they may be mad or frustrated.
This face training demo was really interesting. I received a 40% because I didn’t pay attention close enough. Once I Pushed the flash button I got the answer right each time. The expressions the individuals showed on the video are the same ones that I see myself and my friends show when they are angry, surprised, etc.
In the chapter 12 it explains how some people in different cultures show different facial emotions when experiencing them. For example on page 343, it shows four pictures of individuals form New Guinea who are displaying emotions. It asks what one is experiencing disgust, I could only rule out one, all the others looked like viable disgust expressions. This shows how we can feel like someone is disgusted about something when they actually are in distress.
In chapter 11 it talks about emotions having personal meaning, and if we can’t tell what the emotion is, or mistake it for something else we could go against the person’s emotion and creating something aversive. Some people may think it is hard to mistake one emotion from another but really, it can be quite easy. According to the biological perspective there is between 2 and 10 basic emotions that can be experienced. This and the fact that some emotions can be hard to distinguish from person to person make it easier for them to be mistaken. Some emotions can be strong and easier to distinguish while others are weaker because the feeling that brought up the emotion wasn’t too intense.
This demo relates to motivation by the behavior that may follow the emotion. For example if someone expresses the facial emotion of fear their next behavior might be to run or scream. The emotions that are shown usually come from a motivation of the emotion to occur. If someone jumps out in from of you in a dark room you are highly motivated to scream and then express anger once you find out it was a joke. These facial expressions also motivate others to act in certain ways. For example if an individual smiles after someone tells the joke to them, the individual who told the joke is motivated to tell another one because he/she is getting reinforcement from it. If someone is expresses fear, their friend or a parent might step in and comfort them because they feel motivated to.
Terms: motivation, aversive, biological perspective, behavior, disgust, fear, anger, surprised, emotion
I thought the demo was pretty interesting and fun. It wasn't what I was expecting when the they meant flash the facial expression. I thought they expressions were going to be shown a little longer. But saw that I wasn't that good at recognizing facial expressions in the demo. I only got 40 percent right. I remember in my other psych classes that there are seven basic/universal facial expressions. They are fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happy/joy, contempt, and surprise. These were also the choices of that you can choose from in the demo.
Chapter 11 talks about most of the seven basic emotional facial expressions. What makes these expressions basic and universal is that they are natural. This means they are things you are born with, rather than things you learn through your experience. These emotions are universal because they come from the same circumstances for all people. The expressions are also unique and distinct. They also evoke a distinctive and predictable physiological patterned response. Fear is when a person faces a dangerous situation. Anger is when one a person's plan is interfered or restrained. Disgust is getting rid of or getting away from a contaminated, deteriorated, or spoiled object. Sadness is the most negative and comes from a separation or failure. Joy comes from anything that makes you pleasant. Contempt is day-to-day. We always have some level of interest, but depending on the day, it may be different. Surprise is experienced when something unexpected occurs.
In Chapter 12 discusses the Differential Emotions Theory. It describes much of the characteristics that the 7 basic/universal expressions all share. However, in this theory, it has ten emotions that serve a motivational purpose. Besides the emotions that were listed in the demo, the theory includes distress, shame, and guilt. These emotions prepare the person to act in an adaptive way. This theory gives an explanation to how motivation is involved. There are five prostulates that the ten emotions fit. They are that they constitute the principle motivation system for human beings. They are unique feelings (meaning that each emotion has its own subjective quality). They are unique expressions (facial expression). They have their unique neural activity. And lastly, they have a unique purpose/motivation. Each emotion generates distinctive motivational properties and adaptive functions.
The METT demo was very interesting to me. I wish the demo was longer because I was terrible and needed more practice, although I did enjoy it! The purpose of this demo was to show that many individuals try to keep their emotions hidden but there are often tiny facial expressions that take place. With practice people can learn to detect the expressions. Each expression is only 1/15-1/25 of a second, but each expression still has the same meaning and effect on an individual and a direct relation to emotion.
The demo used the emotions: fear, anger, sad, happy, disgust, surprise, and contempt. Paul Ekman believes that biological perspective is that emotions are biological because they evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks. He also said that biology lies at the causal core of emotion.
This relates to the chapter because emotions are motivators. We use emotions to understand what motivators drive an individual to experience an emotion. Being able to “read” and understand someone is an advantage to humans. Relating and understanding others is important and can be learned by focusing on other individuals emotions.
I thought this was an exciting activity. It was fun and different from the usual movie!
Terms used: motivator, emotion, biological perspective
The demo was very interesting for me to do. I expected it to take me around an hour to complete, because it said that you could finish it in less than one hour. So I was surprisingly shocked that I got it done in a matter of a few minutes. The facial expressions at first were hard for me to compute to what their actual emotion was. I had to replay the button a few times, to double, and sometimes even triple make sure I was hitting the right emotion. It was a lot trickier than I thought it would be, especially since the expression on the face barely moves. But overall I did enjoy doing the demo, I thought it was a neat little trick for training, so that the professionals have a better chance of reading people.
The demo included all sorts of emotions; anger, fear, disgust, contempt, surprise, sadness, and happiness. All of these are talked about in chapter 11 and 12. These ones are more popular, heard, and seen in the world. The way people go about with their facial expression is talked about in these chapters as well. People express their emotions in many different ways, so in turn there’s a different way of expressing themselves through their own facial expressions due to that particular emotion they are sharing. As a medical professional, being able to link emotions to physical aspects of the body, they are able to diagnose and read if emotion(s) are getting involved with a persons well-being and health status.
This site relates to motivation, because emotions can encourage someone to both experience or only experience positive or negative emotions during their everyday life. In this demo that METT did, we see that it’s important to have the ability to recognize the emotion and how it is motivated. As long as we are able to read the emotions, than we have a better understanding of how each emotion can be expressed. From personal experience, I go through a range of emotions daily, so if someone had the skill to pick up on how I am feeling just moments ago, I’d be impressed and also they could have the ability to create a whole new interaction that hadn’t been exposed or expressed until the moment they recognized my true emotion through my facial expressions. Now that would be pretty awesome. Overall, I really enjoyed doing this short and to the point demo.
After taking the demo test of the face training exercise, I only got 20% if the emotions correct. It was very difficult to determine in such a brief moment of time what exactly is going on with their face. Without the transition period of watching a person go from a normal face to an emotion makes things much more difficult for an untrained individual. While doing some further reading on the website, I came across the part where it describes someone lying. The website said that even though people are trying to conceal their emotions when lying, they still have a brief 1/25 of a second where their emotions surface. This now makes sense why the images were shown so fast in the demo. For someone who wants to be trained in a profession like this, it’s imperative that they can recognize facial change at any given second.
I would say that Paul Ekman’s beliefs on emotion are that they are biological and not cognitive. It does so happen that he is also mentioned in the book under the biological perspective so that helps me to decipher that one down a little bit. In the book he points out that emotions have very rapid onsets, brief durations, and can occur automatically/involuntarily. Thus, emotions happen to us, as we act emotionally even before we are consciously aware of that emotionality. Emotions are biological because they evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks.
If you believe in the cognitive prospective, you believe that emotions are developed through mental processes. Richard Lazarus states that without understanding of the personal relevance of an event’s potential impact on personal well-being, there is no reason to respond emotionally. Stimuli appraised as irrelevant do not elicit emotional reactions.
I believe that the basic emotions of fear, anger, disgust, sadness, Joy, acceptance, anticipation, and surprise are all biological when we express them. There have been many times I can think of that I’ve had these emotions without a cognitive explanation until after the emotion as happened. On the other hand, moods seem to be developed through cognitive thought in a situation a person might be in.
If emotions on are biologically formed, I can see how they could be of use for detecting if someone is lying. Emotions are a huge Social Function to how we see people around us. Emotions communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships. If are emotions are not completely controllable, than we would be able to tell briefly when someone is experiencing each emotion. This is the basis of face training.
Terms: Biological perspective, cognitive prospective, emotion, mood, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, acceptance, anticipation, surprise.
The METT Demo was really hard for me. I though they all had a content face. It took me a few try’s on all five of the faces. I think this can relate to what we talked about in the chapter about all the other way we can tell emotion like through their voice and gestures. I think in the demo it was really hard because you just got a picture and not a story of what was going on before they took the picture or anything. I think this relates also to motivation because emotions play a big role in motivation and based on how a person is feeling can determine how motivated they are to do something.