Adults Don’t Get Better at Recognizing Masked Faces

When you recognize a friend’s face, how do you know? Do you make a careful study of their nose and cheekbones? Are you thrown off if they don’t wear the usual expression? The vast majority of people probably scoffed at those questions. Facial recognition usually isn’t a matter of careful study, but instead it is…

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Are Cats Sensitive to Human Emotions?

Historically cats have received less research attention than their canine counterparts and their cognitive abilities were less recognized. However, in the last 10 years, research focusing on trying to better understand our feline companions has grown. Can cats read emotions? A recent 2020 study entitled “Emotion Recognition in Cats” published in the journal Animals demonstrated…

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Mental Health and Deception Detection

Are we confusing cues of low credibility with atypical behavior of people with mental health issues? Re-published with permission from Evidentia University. Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Atypical behaviors found in some mental health conditions negatively affect judgements of deception and credibility” by Lim, A.; Young, R. L.…

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Meta Analysis: Psychological Effects of Power Poses

Body language affects how others see us, but can it also change how we see ourselves? Amy Cuddy’s infamous 2012 Power Pose Ted Talk (above) claimed that power posing was the key to confidence. Critics shut down her theory for years, but the latest research indicates that there may be some truth in it after…

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