Contempt and Politics According to Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks, 1 in 6 Americans stopped talking to close friends and family about politics during and after the 2016 Presidential Election. Emotions shape much of our lives, so it would make sense that they impact how we handle political discussions as well. In his column with The…
Read MoreDisgust: Dissecting the Facial Expression
A few weeks ago, we posted an article about the hapless kombucha drinker whose disgust facial expressions went viral. This week, we get the benefit of Humintell’s own Dr. David Matsumoto’s insight into the details of her expressions. After trying kombucha, the video’s subject, Brittany Tomlinson, cycles through a rapid sequence of vivid facial expressions,…
Read MoreA Fear Response Can Have Some Unexpected Benefits
Most of us would just as soon not be afraid, but our natural fear response can have some unexpected benefits. This point is made salient by recent scientific efforts to program fear responses into artificial intelligence. While this might seem like an odd thing to do, programmers saw this as a helpful component to teaching…
Read MoreCatching Emotional Contagion
It is well known that emotions can spread to other people of the group (called emotional contagion), but what is the role of emotional recognition in this process? There is certainly a long history of research and casual observations as to how other people’s emotions can impact our own, but the exact causal mechanism is…
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