Emotions: What are Their Functions?

function of emotions

Emotions are surely important in our lives, but it is amazing to see just how foundational they really are in how we experience the world. Humintell’s own Drs.  David Matsumoto and Hyisung Hwang put together a comprehensive book chapter exploring that very question. They emphasize the crucial role that emotions have in intrapersonal, interpersonal, and…

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Jan van Hooff visits chimpanzee “Mama”, 59 yrs old and very sick. Emotional meeting

Can we recognize emotions amongst other species? Can they recognize ours? If our emotional recognition skills expand to other species besides humans, that tells us a great deal about the universality and evolutionary basis of our expressions, including our basic emotions. In this amazing video, Dr. Jan van Hooff visits an elderly chimpanzee, Mama, whom…

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Why Some People Lie Better Than Others

Lie detection is tough for a lot of people, but why do some people happen to just be better at it than others? This is an important question not just in our attempts to understand how to detect deception but also in efforts to better understand the role of emotional recognition in lie detection. A…

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Nonverbal Behavior: Who Are The Landmarks in the Field?

We spend a great deal of time talking about Humintell’s work on nonverbal behavior, but it’s important to know that this is a wide and exciting field! In a recent paper in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, a pair of researchers sought to map out the major authors and major papers that have dominated the…

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