We keep talking about nonverbal behavior with strangers, but what role does it have in close interpersonal contexts? There is plenty of reason to think that this is important! We pick up on our romantic partner’s nonverbal behavior, even if we don’t realize that we are doing it. In a recent paper, a team of…
Read MoreCorruption: Could it be Possible to Recognize on Faces?
Many of us worry about corruption amongst political elites, but could it be possible to actually recognize it in their faces? In a pretty creative study, a team of psychologists from the California Institute of Technology sought to explore whether people could detect evidence of corruption by government officials by providing them with pictures of…
Read MoreFacial Age and Recognition
Sometimes it is very important to evaluate age based on someone’s face alone, but this can be quite tricky. This is actually a surprisingly pressing issue as age is relevant in all sorts of commercial, social, or political contexts. While it seems intuitive that we should be able to recognize people’s ages pretty easily, this…
Read MoreThreat in the Golden Years
As we age, we tend to look more fondly on the world and on our memories, but does that mean we can’t detect threat? While a great deal of research indicates that older individuals tend to focus on pleasurable or non-threatening aspects of experience and memories, it is unclear whether this means they are less…
Read More