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LiveScience
Trying to figure out if your partner's angry? Look at his or her body, not face.
When people are at the peak of joy or despair, their body language is a more reliable indicator of their emotions than their face, a new study finds.
"You can't tell from the face alone if something good's going on or bad going on. When people see the faces alone, they're kind of lost," said study co-author Hillel Aviezer, a psychologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "The body maintains a clear signal of positive and negative."
The findings are detailed today (Nov. 29) in the journal Science.
Most research on reading emotions has focused on the face. A few studies had shown that people rely on body language to read emotion when it clashes with someone's facial expression, but those studies used trained actors in poses, Aviezer told LiveScience.
His research team wanted to see how people use body language to read intense emotions. To do so, his team gathered dozens of images of elite tennis players at the moment they won or lost critical points in high-stakes competitions like the U.S. Open.
"There is lots of money involved, it's lots of ego involved, it's very high stakes. You have a lot of points in the game where people could have very positive emotions or negative emotions," he said.
They showed three groups of 15 participants images of just the face, just the body, or both together, and asked the viewers whether the image showed positive or negative emotion.
People who saw the body — with or without the face — accurately guessed whether the player was happy or distraught. Those who viewed just the faces failed to distinguish between happy and unhappy players.
The team also morphed winning faces onto losing bodies and vice versa, and found that the body cues dictated whether or not viewers thought the players had won.
The findings don't rule out the face from all emotional cues, he said.
"But when things become very intense, the good and the bad merge together, and it's hard to tell if it's positive or negative," he said.
Interestingly, when people saw a body and face together, they said they made judgments based on facial expression — even though they were actually using body cues to interpret the pictures.
"People use information from the body and then they read it into the face," Aviezer said.
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Leave a Comment:
this is very interesting.
wonder if it includes facial "micro-expressions" -- those signals lasting only fractions of a second -- which untrained viewers do not see, and which must often be captured by slow-mo video.
cannot help to continue to think that the face is = to or greater than -- body. especially true for video xmissions, where body language is blunted.
Tits are neutral yet they always make me smile.
I am currently doing a self-funded study on this very subject, in the Orient where neither me nor the subject speaks the others language. By reading my body language the massage girls know exactly what message I'm trying to convey.
Yes, I've been known to look at a woman's chest and butt. It might not have improved their mood... oh, well.
Dude, you can't know what they're feeling because clothes cover important bits of body language.
Who are these people who re-do studies done years before? Who are the idiots who present the results as if they were previously unknown?
It hasn't been done before. Try reading the article more slowly, maybe with a dictionary handy.
But if you can't make sense of it, don't worry. Go watch TV.
just because you didn't know that body language reveals more than facial expressions does not mean it has not been previously studied and written about.
Just to add this discussion, if you make a claim that this study has already been done and written about, please provide a citation for that previous study to support your claim.
That fact that this study appeared in Science, a well respected, peer-reviewed journal should indicate that this is new or newly written about as they do search for previous studies on the subject and usually reject article submissions that repeat what already has been done, unless the new work overturns or corrects the old. While some may think that everyone knows this fact (about body language), if it has not been formally written about and published, it is considered unknown and in fact, the methods in this article introduce a few things that were unknown, that when people think they are judging emotions based on facial expression, that subconsciously they are including information about body language in their final assessment.
In that regard, the claim that this has already been done also implies that the editors and staff at the journal company Science missed something that you are aware of and the scientific community would appreciate if you provide a citation to support the claim that this study is a repeat of past work on this very subject.
I don't think a study has been published before this, but it has been widely known and discussed regarding communication between people. A lot of this information really isn't new, but there are plenty of people out there who don't take into account that body language needs to be observed more than what someone is saying.
JRS, I've been around for six decades, and while, when prompted, I remember most of what I've ever read, I don't necessarily recall where I read it. But I can unequivocally say it was a reputable source.
My face can't give you the one finger salute. But if my body is giving to you, yea, I'm pissed off.
TimMc - yeah I get that gesture all the time as I'm putzing down the expressway in the passing lane at 55mph
Body language also conveys the degree of social maturity a person may possess. When a woman stares at me in the belief that I am unaware, then turns away with a poker-faced, wide-eyed expression of mild discomfort when I look her way, it tells me that inside there is but a middle-school girl, dealing with her adult emotions and yet green on the tree...
You'll lose every time at poker then if you only use your "Poker Face!"
Better hone up on your "Poker Body," dudes!!!
kara, lol, let's body talk!
One of the benefits of this study is to the robotic community. In the attempt to make more humanoid or personable robots, robotics labs have been trying to reproduce facial expressions to convey emotions to try to interact with people.
However, the articulations of a robot are much more suited for body language so that even the basic humanoid form with a fixed facial area can still convey what is perceived as emotion from the body language alone based on the results of this study.
Boys who have to brag like you guys on here are probably sad because you have so little to brag about. Get a life!
yeah. body language says alot. for instance i had a furnace installed earlier this month and the person who installed it said he had a few more adjustments to make after he talked to the manager of the units i live in. unfortunately for me the man who installed it never got back in touch nor did the manager. alas, i saw the installer, (i'll call him) on the 27th of this month going into two other units; he never acknowledged me (i was on front porch). as he walked by me, his body seemed full of tension as if to say,"please don't call me, don't ask me anything, i know i'm wrong just let me go", so i did. needless to say, when the manager gets the bill for the adjustments that have to be made to the heater, i'm sure his body language will be one of frustration.
Ok, well that works. Next time I'm playing Million dollar tennis, I'll now know how my opponent is felling!
Just a side note: I'm no body language expert; however I always seemed to know what kind of mood John McEnroe was in. John's body language told me that by Slamming his tennis racket to the ground and breaking it into a few pieces usually meant he was ..well..upset. But Thee loved every minute of his antics!
Yer Pal Always,
Thee
So this was conducted with elite tennis players, winning or losing, and the face body connection? This was a funded study?? What a waste of research $!!
WTF? OMFG! Pure BS!