Interpreting Other People’s Emotions, A Matter Of Trust
Do we know how to correctly interpret the emotions of others? Every day we see dozens, if not hundreds, of facial expressions in other people. These expressions make us react in one way or another depending on how we interpret them.
But are we really interpreting other people’s facial expressions correctly? How much do we trust our own judgment to trust others? How much does our confidence in recognizing the expression of an emotion depend on perceptual information or other non-perceptual information?
There is no doubt that this confidence is essential to avoid potentially dangerous situations. However, appearances are often deceptive, for better or for worse.
A team from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, tested how confident we feel about judging other people’s emotions and which areas of the brain are activated in this process. The results of the study were published at the end of December 2018 in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
They show that our beliefs about our own emotional interpretation derive directly from the experiences stored in our memory. And that experience confuses us sometimes – the past is not a perfect predictor of the future.
Interpret other people’s emotions
Every day we make dozens, hundreds of decisions. All of them involve some degree of trust in someone or something.
However, this trust does not always honor the decision taken. Sometimes we are wrong, even when we are absolutely sure that we have made the right decision. It happens in all aspects of our life.
When it comes to social interactions, we are constantly interpreting the facial expressions of those around us. In this sense, being aware of subjectivity is essential to interpret the emotions of others.
The researchers discussed above wanted to test the level of confidence we place in our interpretations of the emotional behavior of others. They hoped to discover which areas of the brain activate during these interpretations.
Scientists decided to measure trust-related behavior by asking 34 participants to judge different faces displaying a mixture of positive and negative emotions.
Each face was framed by two horizontal bars of different thickness. Some faces displayed clear grimaces of joy or anger, while others were very ambiguous.
Participants first had to define which emotion was represented by each of the 128 faces. Next, participants had to choose which of the two bars was thicker. Finally, for each decision made, they were asked to indicate their level of confidence in their choice on a scale from 1 (not very confident) to 6 (confident).
The bars were used to assess their confidence in visual perception, which in this case served as a control mechanism. The test results surprised the researchers.
According to the researchers, the average level of confidence for emotional recognition was higher than for visual perception. Yet participants made more errors in emotional recognition than in visual perception of lines.
In fact, they explain, it is more difficult to recognize emotions than to judge a perception. Interlocutors may lie or avoid expressing emotions due to social conventions. It follows that it is more difficult to properly assess our confidence in recognizing the emotions of others in the absence of any comment.
Also, we have to interpret an expression very quickly, because it is fleeting. Therefore, we think our first impression is correct, and we trust our judgment on an angry face.
In contrast, the assessment of perception is a longer process and is sensitive to direct feedback on its accuracy. When in doubt, trust is lower than with emotions, because we are aware of our fallibility.
Our memory influences trust
The researchers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, examined the neural mechanisms during this process of confidence in recognizing emotions. They explain that when participants judged the lines, the areas of perception (visual areas) and attention (frontal areas) were active.
When assessing confidence for the recognition of emotions, areas related to autobiographical and contextual memory activated. In particular the parahippocampal gyrus and the cingulate gyrus,
This shows that the brain systems that store personal and contextual memories are directly involved in beliefs about the recognition of emotions. They determine the accuracy of the interpretation of facial expressions and the confidence placed in that interpretation, the researchers explain.
Our thoughts We present here the main theories on emotions, aiming to explain why they exist, and how they work.
