Blink
"Blink" has to be one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. It ranks right up there with "Phantoms in the Brain" by Dr. Ramachandran, in my opinion.
One of the coolest things that the book talks about is the relationship between facial expressions and emotions. It talks about a 7-year research project which studied all of the various facial expressions (chin dropping, forehead knitting, brows raising etc ...) and their combinations and mapped each of these expression combinations to a human emotion.
What they found out was that by looking at the expressions, one could, with a high degree of accuracy predict the actual emotions running through a person's mind. For example, a combination of expressions 1, 4, 9 and 22 (I made these numbers up) might be a feeling of joy.
However, what was immensely surprising was that if a person was forced to make the expressions 1,4,9 and 22 together, he or she would feel joyful simply through that act !! In other words, the relationship between facial expressions and emotions is a two way street, with the face not just being a "mirror of the soul", but the soul sometimes being the "actor-out of the face".
Whenever I was glum as a kid, my mother would come and sit with me and keep pushing me to smile. Not by making a joke, but simply by asking me to smile. And usually I finally did, and I would feel better. We Indians have figured everything out :-)
One of the coolest things that the book talks about is the relationship between facial expressions and emotions. It talks about a 7-year research project which studied all of the various facial expressions (chin dropping, forehead knitting, brows raising etc ...) and their combinations and mapped each of these expression combinations to a human emotion.
What they found out was that by looking at the expressions, one could, with a high degree of accuracy predict the actual emotions running through a person's mind. For example, a combination of expressions 1, 4, 9 and 22 (I made these numbers up) might be a feeling of joy.
However, what was immensely surprising was that if a person was forced to make the expressions 1,4,9 and 22 together, he or she would feel joyful simply through that act !! In other words, the relationship between facial expressions and emotions is a two way street, with the face not just being a "mirror of the soul", but the soul sometimes being the "actor-out of the face".
Whenever I was glum as a kid, my mother would come and sit with me and keep pushing me to smile. Not by making a joke, but simply by asking me to smile. And usually I finally did, and I would feel better. We Indians have figured everything out :-)
Comments
you can also associate certain places or things with certain emotions. You can consiously form and break these associations. But the associations can create strong feelings.
So for example, if you feel tired and beaten down after work and you go and sit on a couch and watch TV, after a while you form an association that transports you in to a tired emotional state when you sit on that couch and watch TV.