Mapping Emotions in the Body

Feelings are often associated with physical reactions: terror can send chills down your spine, and love can leave you weak in the knees. A recent study has linked specific emotions to physical sensations. Researchers tested emotional responses in hundreds of subjects and then created maps identifying locations in the body where emotions cause physical changes.…

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Blind Athletes Provide Clues About the Nature of Emotions

By Melanie Tannenbaum for Scientific American One of the most important ways that we learn how to interact with the world around us is through observational learning. By watching how our friends and family members behave, we learn at a very young age how to do things like turn on a lightbulb, open a door,…

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Happy or Not, Russians Rarely Smile in Public

In an article written by Marina Krakovsky and published in Psychology Today entitled“Global Psyche: National Poker Face”, Russian citizen’s facial expressions were compared with Americans. The article states that Russians, who seem very serious, rarely smile in public. The article suggests that this is not because they are pessimistic worry warts, but because their social…

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Facial Expressions for those with Facial Paralysis

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G6ZR5lJgTI[/youtube] By Kathleen Bogart, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Oregon State University Facial expressions are important parts of how we communicate and how we develop impressions of the people around us. In “The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals,” Charles Darwin proposed that facial expressions evolved to quickly communicate emotional states important to social survival.…

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