by Sandi Mann
Case study: The Wobbly Bridge Study
In 1974 psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron conducted a study at the Capilano Canyon in Canada which is crossed by two particular bridges. One bridge is a solid wooden one only 3 metres above a shallow part of the canyon below. The other is a more frail-looking suspension bridge that tends to sway, tilt and wobble such that people stepping on it feel that they might be at risk of falling 70 metres into the canyon below. People walking across the rickety bridge thus tended to be quite aroused with fear – their pulse rates would quicken, they may have sweated and their hearts would pound. Indeed, this may be why they chose that bridge. No such arousal was likely on the lower, solid bridge.
The experimenters interviewed men crossing each of the two bridges and tested how attracted they were to a female confederate on the other side of the canyon. What they found was that those men on the swaying suspension bridge were more attracted to the woman than those on the sturdier crossing. The reason given was that the men on the scarier bridge experienced a state of arousal that, in the presence of a woman, they interpreted as attraction for her. The men on the sturdy bridge had no such physical feelings to misinterpret.
The study shows why colleagues at work who have been through some emotional experience together (such as beating a tight deadline or winning a big contract) can end up in a romance – they misinterpret the emotions they are feeling as love.
Facial expression
‘Many facial expressions … occur throughout the world in every human race and culture. The expressions appear to represent, in every culture, the same emotions.’
N. H. Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
In our evolutionary past, using facial expressions and correctly detecting them in others was vital to our survival. Before we were advanced enough to have developed an effective verbal language, we had to use facial expressions to communicate. It was essential that we knew, for example, that someone was angry with us, so that we could run away before they attacked us. Similarly, showing displeasure would have allowed our ancestors to have a better chance of getting what they wanted (e.g. food or resources).
Emotional expressions that were particularly important to our ancestors were angry, fearful or anxious ones and being able to express or read these emotions would have been an essential skill for survival. For example, noticing that another member of our tribe was looking terrified would have alerted us to the danger of an approaching predator, while if we expressed our anger this might have caused others in our tribe to act in order to remove the source of our displeasure. All of this helped ensure that our genes endured.
Some emotional displays are thought to be universal, which means that they are recognized all over the world. The so-called Facial Expression Universality Theory is thought by many to have been developed by Charles Darwin, although, in reality, his work followed earlier researchers (such as Charles Bell in 1806) in this field. For an emotional expression to be truly universal, it should meet three criteria:
1 The same pattern of facial display should occur in all human groups wherever they are and even if they are isolated from other groups.
2 People in different societies and cultures should attribute the same emotion to the same expression.
3 Those same facial patterns should, indeed, be indicative of that very emotion in all human societies.
It is thought that the universal facial expressions correspond to the six universal emotions discussed earlier. Psychologist Paul Ekman showed photographs of faces to people in 20 different Western cultures and 11 different isolated and non-literate groups in Africa. He found that 96 per cent of Western respondents and 92 per cent of African respondents identified happy faces. Similar numbers of people could identify disgust and anger, suggesting that humans’ facial displays are common across cultures for at least these three emotions. Other studies have shown that surprise achieves ‘recognition’ ratings of 87.5 per cent in Western cultures (and slightly lower in non-Western). Sadness and fear show slightly lower recognition rates, but are still above 80 per cent (Russell 1994).
Spotlight: Emotional ‘dialects’
More recent research disputes this universality of facial expression theory, suggesting instead that there are local ‘dialects’ in emotional display (Jack et al. 2012).
Functions of emotions
‘The primary function is to mobilize the organism to deal quickly with important interpersonal encounters.’
Paul Ekman, ‘An Argument for Basic Emotions’, Cognition and Emotion 6 (1992): 171
The role of emotions is to alert us to changes in the environment or in ourselves; many of these would have had evolutionary benefit. Emotions motivate us towards change and reaction. For example, the feeling of disgust alerts us that something is present that could harm us or make us ill. Anger transforms us from calmness to a readiness to fight. Fear alerts us that we are in danger and should run. Even sadness can alert us to make changes in our lives, while anxiety can motivate us to study for that upcoming exam. Emotions also have an important communicative role. They tell others how we feel and thus might cause them to act differently; for example, the target of our anger might do something to stop us feeling angry.
The functions of emotions, then, fall into three categories: the intrapersonal (the role they play within each individual), the interpersonal (the role they play in maintaining relationships between different individuals), and the societal and cultural functions (the role emotions play in helping society at large) of emotions.
Emotion regulation
It is possible to experience emotions without any corresponding facial display – and the other way around: we can present a facial display without the accompanying emotion. Research suggests that there are subtle differences between faked facial display and real ones. Faked smiles, for example, are often assumed to be those that do not reach the eyes, a suggestion that originated in the nineteenth century when the French neuro-anatomist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Bologne (1806–75) claimed that the muscle orbiting the eye (orbicularis oculi) is not engaged during faked smiles. Indeed, more than a dozen studies since Duchenne’s suggestion have revealed this assertion to be correct; genuine smiles are now even sometimes referred to as ‘Duchenne smiles’.
Smiles are not the only facial displays that consist of some muscle action that is hard to fake. Anger, fear and sadness also contain muscular actions that are hard for people to deliberately perform; these emotional displays also contain some that are easier to fake, too. Surprise and disgust, however, contain only ‘difficult to make’ muscle actions (called ‘reliable’ actions by Ekman because they are reliable indicators of true emotions), which is why these are the hardest emotions to fake. Those of us who are keen photographers will certainly know this is true of surprise; how many times have we tried to capture the surprise on a loved one’s face at a birthday surprise, for example, only to miss the fleeting moment – however much we try to get our subject to emulate that initial expression, it is never quite as convincing as capturing genuine surprise and delight.
Sometimes we use facial expressions in the full knowledge that other people will know they are fake. This is called ‘referential’ expression and might occur when we are describing a past event; we will refer to something that happened and adopt the appropriate emotional expression as a way of adding emphasis, but everyone is aware that the display is simply referring to that experienced during the event, rather than intending to be a genuine expression of how we feel now during the retelling. The ‘reliable’ muscles are not used in these referential expressions, but that is considered acceptable, as no one expects them to be reflecting genuine emotion. In fact, the actor is likely to actually want to impress upon their audience that the expression is faked in this instance; they might go to extra lengths to show this perhaps by deliberately exaggerating their expression.
There might be another reason why reliable muscle actions wil
l be deliberately missed out during referential displays: research has consistently shown that arranging our face to show the appropriate emotional expression can actually lead us to genuinely feeling that emotion – something that we don’t necessarily want when we are recounting an event. When we arrange our face into the emotion we are attempting to express, the physiological pattern is noticed by the brain and interpreted as reflecting the emotion; my face is smiling so I must be happy. This is why, if we are recounting an emotional experience that involves referential facial displays, we sometimes end up actually feeling the emotion; for example, retelling an event that made you angry can reignite your anger all over again.
This idea – that the facial display can actually produce or enhance the emotion – was first suggested by Darwin in 1872. William James went even further by claiming that, if a person does not express an emotion on their face, they haven’t felt it at all. Although modern scientists don’t go quite this far, facial expressions are thought to play a big role in how intensely we feel emotions.
In 2011 psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown was limited by cosmetic Botox injections were happier, on average, than people who could frown. This wasn’t because the Botoxed people felt any more attractive (they checked that); the emotional effects were not driven by any psychological boost that could have come from the Botox making them look better, but because they were unable to frown – the messages of sadness that a frown produces were simply not being sent to the brain.
An intriguing study reported in the journal Psychological Science took this idea one stage further (Kraft and Pressman 2012). Researchers from the University of Kansas had people hold chopsticks in their mouths in such a way that they either produced neutral expressions, fake smiles or Duchenne (genuine) smiles. They were not aware that they were actually mimicking the muscle patterns of a smile with the chopsticks. They then gave all the participants a stressful activity and found that those who had arranged their faces into smiles showed faster recovery from the stress than those who didn’t. Those who adopted the genuine Duchenne smile recovered the quickest. This suggests that smiling can help cope with stress, even if we don’t actually feel like smiling.
The effect seems to work in the opposite way, too; one study showed that people who frown during an uncomfortable or painful procedure report feel more pain than those who do not. Researchers applied heat to the forearms of participants, who were asked to either make unhappy, neutral or relaxed faces during the procedure. Those who made the negative expressions reported being in more pain than the other two groups. It could well be then that, in order to feel less pain, all we need to do is stop ourselves expressing it our facial displays.
Humans are (we assume) unique among the animals in that we are very able to manage and regulate our emotions and their display. Hiding what we feel and faking what we don’t is an important part of our emotional life. Emotion management is about the care we take in presenting the right emotional display at the right time. Humans are able to manage or control the emotions that they display by faking appropriate emotions and suppressing felt ones.
There are thought to be two different methods of faking unfelt emotion or suppressing felt emotions in order to meet display rule expectations (i.e. written or unwritten rules about which displays one should express or suppress in a public space) – surface or deep acting:
• Surface acting refers to making changes to our external appearance – our surface – in order to match the required persona – putting on a ‘face’ or mask. This is all about superficial change with no change to actual feeing involved. Thus, for example, if we are required to express concern or interest (that we do not feel), we can simply arrange our facial features into the appropriate expression in order to convey the corresponding emotion. In other words, we don’t actually need to feel the emotion we are trying to portray.
• Deep acting, however, is about changing how we actually feel in order to match the expected emotion and outward expression of that emotion. Thus, we try to genuinely feel interested or concerned, rather than just concerning ourselves with appearing to do so. We might have to psych ourselves up (perhaps by imagining that the recipient of our display is a loved relative) to feel the required emotion since simply arranging our face won’t do it.
Dig deeper
A book about disgust:
Susan B. Miller, Disgust: The Gatekeeper Emotion (London: Routledge, 2004)
Journalistic article about blushing:
Nick Collins. ‘Blushing in the Dark: First Experimental Proof’, The Telegraph, 4 September 2013:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10285883/Blushing-in-the-dark-first-experimental-proof.html
Online article about how Botox may prevent young people learning to express and read emotions properly:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29174929
Fact-check
1 Which of the following is not an essential component of emotion?
a Cognition
b Physical changes
c Expression
d Behaviour
2 How many distinct, basic emotions did Plutchik believe there were?
a 6
b 12
c 4
d 8
3 The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion was developed by:
a James and Lange
b Cannon and Bard
c Schachter and Singer
d Schachter and Lange
4 What is Suproxin?
a A vitamin
b Adrenalin
c Epinephrine
d A placebo
5 For an emotional expression to be truly universal, it should:
a Have the same pattern of facial movement in all human groups
b Be attributed to the same emotion by different observers in different cultural groups
c Be manifestations of that very emotion in all human societies
d All of the above
6 The functions of emotion fall into which of the following categories:
a Interpersonal
b Intrapersonal
c Societal
d All of the above
7 What is a Duchenne smile?
a A fake smile
b A genuine smile
c One in which all the facial muscles are used
d All of the above
8 To decrease the feeling of pain during a painful procedure, one should:
a Frown
b Cry
c Smile
d Close the eyes
9 To control your facial expression so that you present the expression you are expected to, you should:
a Deep-act only
b Surface-act only
c Be genuine
d Surface- or deep-act.
10 What are display rules?
a Rules about which emotions one may express or suppress in public
b Rules about how posters should be displayed at work
c Rules about how you should feel at work
d Unwritten
8
Intelligence
The word ‘intelligence’ derives from the Latin verb intelligere, meaning ‘to comprehend’ or ‘to perceive’. The concept of intelligence, however, is elusive and there are many, varied ways to define it.
Some definitions
Some of the most influential researchers into intelligence have suggested the following definitions:
‘Judgment, otherwise called “good sense,” “practical sense,” “initiative,” the faculty of adapting one’s self to circumstances … auto-critique.’
Alfred Binet, pioneering intelligence researcher
‘The aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.’
David Wechsler, deviser of the Wechsler Adult Intelligent Scale (WAIS), much used in clinical settings
‘To my mind, a human intellect
ual competence must entail a set of skills of problem-solving — enabling the individual to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she encounters and, when appropriate, to create an effective product — and must also entail the potential for finding or creating problems — and thereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of new knowledge.’
Howard Gardner, developmental psychologist well known for his Theory of Multiple Intelligences
‘…all branches of intellectual activity have in common one fundamental function, whereas the remaining or specific elements of the activity seem in every case to be wholly different from that in all the others.’
Charles Spearman, deviser of the single intelligence factor, g
Models and theories of intelligence
A number of theories have been proposed to account for what intelligence actually is; some of the most prominent ones will be outlined here.
SPEARMAN’S TWO-FACTOR THEORY
Charles Spearman (1863–1945) was an English psychologist well known for his work in statistics. His theory of intelligence proposed that there were two elements or factors that make up intelligence: a general factor (which he called g) and one or more specific factors such as verbal, mathematical, and artistic skills. The g factor is an innate and universal ability whereas specific factors are learned.