Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And let's give this opening another shot,
Speaker 1: because I just tried to really corny opening line and
Speaker 1: Robert's just a look of quiet contempt across the table.
Speaker 1: I was I was laughing on the inside, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you were. I wasn't even laughing at my
Speaker 1: own joke there, um, And maybe this will be better. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start off today by doing a Charles
Speaker 1: Darwin deep cut. So Darwin of course published his great
Speaker 1: work on the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: and of course that was the book that explained his
Speaker 1: theory of the origin of species, the revolution by natural selection.
Speaker 1: Then later you got another one, that's The Descent of
Speaker 1: Man eighteen seventy one, which applied his theory to human evolution.
Speaker 1: And then a year after that, in eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: he published The Oppression of Emotions in Man and Animals,
Speaker 1: which is about the biological features of emotions like happiness, sadness, surprise, fear.
Speaker 1: For example, The relationship between what we feel and the
Speaker 1: physical expressions of those feelings in the body. Because I
Speaker 1: think this is one of those little mysteries that's so
Speaker 1: close and so invisible, we forget to ask why, But
Speaker 1: why is it that emotions which are influenced by the
Speaker 1: content of our thoughts, like our beliefs and our knowledge
Speaker 1: what we're aware of? They why do they cause these powerful, automatic,
Speaker 1: even unconscious reactions from the muscles and glands throughout the body.
Speaker 1: Why does a feeling of moral disgust cause us to
Speaker 1: involuntarily turn our faces away and crinkle our noses up?
Speaker 1: Or why does a feeling of embarrassment or passion sometimes
Speaker 1: cause blood to rush to the cheeks and cause us
Speaker 1: to cover parts of our faces with our hands ends,
Speaker 1: Or why does an emotionally manipulative TV commercial about a
Speaker 1: sad dog trigger these unconscious movements in the eyebrows and
Speaker 1: the corners of the mouth, or even engage the tear
Speaker 1: ducks if you're a real sap, yes, the sad dog.
Speaker 1: The dog should be smiling and be happy. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: there's always like those are the things that are funny,
Speaker 1: where like a really dramatically moving, you know, whole movie
Speaker 1: or book might not make me cry, but like the
Speaker 1: the sentimental commercial with like the old dog Buddy and
Speaker 1: the you know, buying the puri in a one for
Speaker 1: him or whatever that really like gets me going finally
Speaker 1: sharpened and by um uh, you know, a multimillion dollar
Speaker 1: marketing campaigns to cut right to the heart. Now their
Speaker 1: emotional assassins, they slip in in the night, their ninja.
Speaker 1: So I think these relationships between thoughts and feelings and
Speaker 1: autonomically regulated involuntary activity of the skeletal muscles in the
Speaker 1: face and elsewhere in the body is truly a fascinating
Speaker 1: evolutionary mystery. Why do our bodies execute these movements when
Speaker 1: we feel these things? What biological purpose does it serve?
Speaker 1: And why does so many of these relationships between feelings
Speaker 1: and movements of the skeletal muscle, not all, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them. Why do they seem to transcend cultural, national,
Speaker 1: and linguistic barriers. So I think this whole area is
Speaker 1: a is a totally interesting subject ripe for investigation. But
Speaker 1: today we wanted to focus on one specific question that
Speaker 1: arises from Darwin's work here, and to introduce this question,
Speaker 1: I want to read a passage with a few abridgements
Speaker 1: from the very end of the book, where Darwin writes
Speaker 1: about some of the implications of his observations about emotions
Speaker 1: in humans and animals. Quote. The movements of expression in
Speaker 1: the face and body, whatever their origin may have been,
Speaker 1: are in themselves of much importance for our welfare. They
Speaker 1: serve as the first means of munication between the mother
Speaker 1: and her infant. She smiles approval and thus encourages her
Speaker 1: child on the right path, or frown's disapproval. We readily
Speaker 1: perceive it's right away, But come on, a kid was
Speaker 1: just born, just already just complete disapproval. Maybe that's more important. Later,
Speaker 1: we readily perceive sympathy in others by their expression. Our
Speaker 1: sufferings are thus mitigated and our pleasures increased, and mutual
Speaker 1: good feeling is thus strengthened. The movements of expression give
Speaker 1: vividness and energy to our spoken word. They reveal the
Speaker 1: thoughts and intentions of others more truly than do words,
Speaker 1: which may be falsified. And then a little bit later,
Speaker 1: the free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the repression, as far as this
Speaker 1: is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions. He
Speaker 1: who gives way to violent gestures will increase his rage.
Speaker 1: He who does not control the signs of fear will
Speaker 1: experience fear and a greater degree. And he who remains
Speaker 1: passive when overwhelmed with grief loses his best chance of
Speaker 1: recovering elasticity of mind. These results followed partly from the
Speaker 1: intimate relation which exists between almost all the emotions and
Speaker 1: their outward manifestations, and partly from the direct influence of
Speaker 1: exertion on the heart and consequently on the brain. Even
Speaker 1: the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in
Speaker 1: our minds. Shakespeare, who from his wonderful knowledge of the
Speaker 1: human mind ought to be an excellent judge, says, is
Speaker 1: it not monstrous that this player here? And this is
Speaker 1: a line from Hamlet's soliloquy, where he's watching the play,
Speaker 1: and he's watching the actors, and he concludes in the
Speaker 1: end that the plays the thing wherein I'll catch the
Speaker 1: conscience of the king. But earlier in the soliloquy he's
Speaker 1: uh watching the actors act, and and Hamlet thinks, is
Speaker 1: it not monstrous that this player here? But in a
Speaker 1: fiction in a dream of passion could force his soul
Speaker 1: so to his own conceit that from her working all
Speaker 1: his visage wand tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
Speaker 1: a broken voice, and his whole functions suiting with forms
Speaker 1: to his conceit, and all for nothing. You know, this
Speaker 1: is interesting getting into acting, because I feel like, maybe
Speaker 1: this is just me, but I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of us when we watch a well acted scene, especially
Speaker 1: in a film as opposed to a play, where you
Speaker 1: can actually get so much closer uh to the facial
Speaker 1: features of the actor, if if the actor is is
Speaker 1: truly talented, it's something to behold watching them channel emotions,
Speaker 1: sometimes completely nonverbally, and I think it probably stands out
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. For for starters, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of bad or just average performances in film
Speaker 1: where you don't see authentic emotion uh channeled, even in
Speaker 1: like scenes of extreme emotion, which you're going to encounter
Speaker 1: more often in a film perhaps than in everyday life.
Speaker 1: But even in everyday life, when we are when we're
Speaker 1: encountering someone displaying extreme emotion, we are likely a part
Speaker 1: of that scenario. You know, unless we're just as we
Speaker 1: see something on the street. But even then, I mean,
Speaker 1: are we Unless you're a complete bystander and you're just
Speaker 1: completely locked out of it, you're probably going to feel something.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point. Whereas if you watch, if
Speaker 1: you're watching just a really well acted scene in a film,
Speaker 1: like you, you have that permission of distance right where
Speaker 1: you can stand back and say, look at what their
Speaker 1: their faces doing, Like I'm watching blood vessels move, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing something in their eyes, like I'm I'm seeing authentic
Speaker 1: emotion pour out of their face. Yeah, It's like watching
Speaker 1: a film can, especially with great acting, can be like
Speaker 1: a tasting course for human emotions, whereas normally, like you know,
Speaker 1: you'd be involved in the cooking or something where you
Speaker 1: know and so uh and of course it would just
Speaker 1: be rude to try to observe other people's emotions. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, that's a really good point about acting.
Speaker 1: And it is uh interesting, I mean we often wonder
Speaker 1: this right, like, um, when an actor convincingly portrays an
Speaker 1: emotion or character, does the actor actually feel that emotion?
Speaker 1: What are the important biological or psychological differences in the
Speaker 1: moment between an actor acting out in emotion with their
Speaker 1: face and their body and a person actually feeling that emotion. Like, what,
Speaker 1: what are the differences you could name their Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously they're different approaches to acting, different schools of acting.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, certainly a lot of the time
Speaker 1: when you're seeing somebody emote on the screen, they are
Speaker 1: they are drawing on real emotions, real experiences that are
Speaker 1: in some way comparable to what their character is supposed
Speaker 1: to feel. Yeah, And I think that's why a lot
Speaker 1: of times actors actually need time to say, get into
Speaker 1: and out of character. You know, they can't turn it
Speaker 1: off and on in an instant. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: maybe some can, but a lot can't. They need they
Speaker 1: need a few moments to sort of gather themselves to
Speaker 1: get in and then gather themselves once they get out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So anyway, are one is suggesting here that
Speaker 1: the bodily manifestations of emotion, including the facial expressions, are
Speaker 1: not just a consequence of the emotions we feel, though
Speaker 1: they are that, of course, uh. And the fact that
Speaker 1: we have these outward uh signs of the emotions we feel,
Speaker 1: of course, is useful for communicating our emotional states to others,
Speaker 1: and this could be one very important biological role that
Speaker 1: these expressions play. But he says they also are involved
Speaker 1: in the regulation and maintenance of the emotions themselves. So
Speaker 1: a smile isn't just a consequence of feeling joy. The
Speaker 1: smile contributes to and sustains and modulates the feeling of joy.
Speaker 1: The tightened lip corner isn't just a result of our
Speaker 1: feeling of contempt, but it in some way makes us
Speaker 1: feel contempt. So it's almost like there are two dogs
Speaker 1: chained to each other, and if one moves the other
Speaker 1: one cannot help but be moved as well. Right, well,
Speaker 1: I mean according to to Darwin's view here. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: his idea that the bodily expressions don't just follow from
Speaker 1: emotional states. They they in part are the emotional states.
Speaker 1: They contribute to and control the emotional states. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we'll get into this some more.
Speaker 1: But I think that this is something that a lot
Speaker 1: of us can can point to times in our life
Speaker 1: where this either definitely feels true or other times where
Speaker 1: it definitely doesn't feel true. Like um, for instance, I
Speaker 1: go to I go to yoga a lot I really
Speaker 1: enjoy and I think benefit physically and mentally from a
Speaker 1: yoga practice. And there are times where you're you're in
Speaker 1: a pose and a teacher may tell everybody, don't you know,
Speaker 1: don't forget to smile, smile, and then that'll change your
Speaker 1: sort of emotional uh participation with the pose, And in
Speaker 1: those situations it it does feel sometimes like it helps.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I've had teachers who say that
Speaker 1: they they've stopped saying that because sometimes people in the class,
Speaker 1: you know, have bad experience. It's with being told to smile.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's become very much a betting, harassed on
Speaker 1: the streets, a cliche of misogynistic behavior, telling someone they
Speaker 1: should smile more telling someone they should smile, And it
Speaker 1: can be that alone. Yeah, I can feel no matter
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know what what your your
Speaker 1: your gender happens to be, it's like being told to smile,
Speaker 1: as if that is just going to fix your problems,
Speaker 1: that's gonna totally change your your your mood. It can
Speaker 1: feel insulting, right like, surely my emotional state depends on
Speaker 1: more than just what my face is doing. And ultimately
Speaker 1: I think we all can agree it does. Being told
Speaker 1: to smile and then smiling does not fix whatever caused
Speaker 1: you to frown to begin with. And then that's not
Speaker 1: getting into the case, you know, the situation that we
Speaker 1: do need to frown, We do need to have like
Speaker 1: the full spectrum of emotions. Right, that's certainly right, even
Speaker 1: if Darwin is correct, Like even if Darwin is right
Speaker 1: that the smile itself can give you some kind of
Speaker 1: feedback that in turn actually increases the positivity of your
Speaker 1: emotional state the smile and make you happier. I mean
Speaker 1: that that doesn't necessarily mean it's good for other, like
Speaker 1: exogenous forces to try to coerce smiling on you, to
Speaker 1: tell you you should be smiling, which I think can
Speaker 1: probably lead to all kinds of other emotions that could
Speaker 1: negate whatever positivity comes from the muscle movements that might
Speaker 1: be making you happier. So, as we're talking, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not talking just about smiles, but smiles do come
Speaker 1: up a lot in in the discussion here, so I
Speaker 1: thought it would be helpful to take a moment just
Speaker 1: talk about what a smile is. Um. You know, our
Speaker 1: smile is a bit different from you know, the smile
Speaker 1: that we see expressed by our great ape brethren. Where
Speaker 1: it is essentially a fear grin. Uh. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's often flashed when an individual is trapped or threatened,
Speaker 1: it to show of submission to more dominant members of
Speaker 1: the group. And you know it's it is then an
Speaker 1: admission of fear and a signal, uh though a signal
Speaker 1: that doesn't just stand on its own. It's like part
Speaker 1: of a larger bodily signal that is expressed, uh, just
Speaker 1: if to say, you know, I am not hostile, I
Speaker 1: am not a threat. And I was reading a little
Speaker 1: bit about this. Neuroscientist um Michael Graziano, who have discussed
Speaker 1: on the show before. He has a wonderful Eon magazine
Speaker 1: article that discusses this topic and he points out a
Speaker 1: number of things we've talked about here already. Also points out,
Speaker 1: you know that that even you know, with humans, people
Speaker 1: sometimes in subservient positions will will smile a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: there's sort of the uh, you know, the the boot
Speaker 1: licking smile that we still kind of identify the idea
Speaker 1: of the obsequious smile. Yeah, and uh, and so that
Speaker 1: in that it would seem that there are certain aspects
Speaker 1: of the great ape smile, but haven't quite left us. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know. He points as well to shakespeare line from
Speaker 1: troy Less and Cressida quote they send their smiles before
Speaker 1: them to Achilles, which which I think is is rather nice.
Speaker 1: So the human smile seems to have definitely emerged out
Speaker 1: of the same sort of thing. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we are we are primates after all. And of course
Speaker 1: even though they're you know, a smile as a smile
Speaker 1: as a mile, there are some cultural differences in the
Speaker 1: way smiles are perceived from one culture to another. Um.
Speaker 1: We mentioned, uh, Darwin mentioned babies earlier, and and certainly
Speaker 1: human newborns flash reflex smiles, but then social smiles come
Speaker 1: a little later, six to twelve weeks generally. Um. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: In this an article, Graziano points out that, you know,
Speaker 1: most commentators agree that primate smiles are very old, and
Speaker 1: some think that it might have evolved out of an
Speaker 1: old or threatening display. But he thinks that if we
Speaker 1: focus too much on the teeth, we miss something else. Again,
Speaker 1: that full body display that is evident, right, It involves
Speaker 1: multiple regions of muscles in the face. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: stuff around the cheeks and the sides of the mouth,
Speaker 1: but also the eyes right, yeah, yeah, and even yeah,
Speaker 1: just like what you know, the full body is doing
Speaker 1: in the full uh you know, communication array, that is
Speaker 1: the face in the head. So what do he proposes
Speaker 1: ultimately is that we're talking We're talking about here is
Speaker 1: a smile. That's kind of a halfway point between not
Speaker 1: re acting to a display of dominance and fully reacting
Speaker 1: to it. Um, which which is which is interesting? It's
Speaker 1: almost like, uh, you know, these these creatures learning to
Speaker 1: lie to each other, to deceive each other, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: here's a quote from where he's talking about like monkey
Speaker 1: A and monkey be, you know, hypothetically interacting. Quote. Monkey
Speaker 1: BE can learn a lot by watching the reaction of
Speaker 1: Monkey A. If Monkey A makes a full blown protective response,
Speaker 1: cringe and all, it's a pretty good sign that Monkey
Speaker 1: A is frightened. He's uneasy, his personal space is revved
Speaker 1: up and expanded. He must view monkey B as a
Speaker 1: threat a social superior. On the other hand, if Monkey
Speaker 1: A reveals only a subtle response, perhaps squinting and slightly
Speaker 1: pulling back his head, it's a good sign that Monkey
Speaker 1: A is not so frightened. He does not consider monkey
Speaker 1: B to be a social superior or a threat, So
Speaker 1: the social signal evolves from here and he drives home
Speaker 1: the quote. The primary evolutionary pressure is on the receiver
Speaker 1: of the signal, not the cinder. The story is about
Speaker 1: how we came to react to smiles. Yeah, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: but it also raises all these other questions about So
Speaker 1: if we consider the evolution of the smile as having
Speaker 1: something to do with social signaling, and you know, relates
Speaker 1: to the social relationships between animals that live in groups
Speaker 1: and interact with each other, why is it that in
Speaker 1: in our lives at least, I would say the smile
Speaker 1: is very divorced from that original context where you smile
Speaker 1: by yourself all the time, you be completely alone and
Speaker 1: something makes you happy and you find yourself beaming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is true. Um. Now, we've discussed before though, how
Speaker 1: we might not laugh, though we might smile but not laugh,
Speaker 1: or at least that's a good point. The laughter might
Speaker 1: be in the smile might be more pronounced if there's
Speaker 1: someone else around, particularly you know, someone we know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were just talking about this before we started recording. Actually,
Speaker 1: how you know we we watched the Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 1: three thousand episode and we laugh if somebody else is
Speaker 1: in the room. It's still funny if nobody else is there,
Speaker 1: but you just don't laugh out loud. Yeah, I've I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of a time if I if I
Speaker 1: ever watched something and just really laughed out loud by myself,
Speaker 1: and how funny it is, Like, uh yeah, nothing comes
Speaker 1: to mind, And in fact, I think I would feel
Speaker 1: weird if I did. I would feel like Sam Neil's
Speaker 1: character at the end of In the Mouth of Madness
Speaker 1: where he's in the movie theater. Sometimes Barbarian movies do
Speaker 1: it for me. I think I was laughing pretty loud
Speaker 1: by myself when I was watching Your Hunter from the Future.
Speaker 1: Maybe you were just beside yourself with laughter. And therefore
Speaker 1: you know you have you know yourself to to communicate
Speaker 1: to um. So so basically, Graziana points out, you know
Speaker 1: that from here it would have been an evolutionary arms race. Um.
Speaker 1: And and this is a wonderful article, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's titled The First Smile. Um. It's available you know,
Speaker 1: Eddie and magazine. And uh, he gets into laughter as well.
Speaker 1: But here's how he sums everything up. Quote. Evolution favors
Speaker 1: animals that can read and react to those signs, and
Speaker 1: it favors animals that can manipulate those signs to influence
Speaker 1: whoever is watching. We have stumbled on the defining ambiguity
Speaker 1: of human emotional life. We are always quite caught between
Speaker 1: authenticity and fake ery, always floating in the gray area
Speaker 1: between involuntary outburst and expedient pretense. Yeah, so, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's helpful to think about the complexity of
Speaker 1: the smile, the mix of authenticity and fakeery. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we've just I think we've discussed fake smiles on the
Speaker 1: show before about how you know, there's this lack of
Speaker 1: micro expressive detail and a fake smile that you can
Speaker 1: pick up on. Um, but that to like truly fake
Speaker 1: a smile, you do have to summon some of the
Speaker 1: energy of the smile, you know. Um. Yeah, anyway, it
Speaker 1: gets it gets very complicated, and especially in the human scenario,
Speaker 1: to to define exactly what a smile is in the
Speaker 1: degrees of smiling. Well, here's maybe a good question. Are
Speaker 1: all smiles on command fake smiles? Or are there are
Speaker 1: there cases where you smile on command and not be
Speaker 1: because you know, you suddenly are overwhelmed by a feeling
Speaker 1: of positivity and joy and happiness. You know, you just
Speaker 1: smile because you need to. But it's not fake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a good question. It's it's it kind of
Speaker 1: goes in with laughter as well, or at least kind
Speaker 1: of like the mild laughter. I think of like interactions
Speaker 1: with people, uh, you know, be be it at work
Speaker 1: or you know, strangers at a store. You know, the
Speaker 1: various social interactions that feel our lives. And I'll catch
Speaker 1: myself smiling, I'll catch myself, you know, laughing a little bit,
Speaker 1: even if there's not a joke, which seems strange, like
Speaker 1: maybe I'm it makes me kind of feel like I'm
Speaker 1: the joker or something. Um, the man who laughs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not in a good way, not in the Steve Miller way,
Speaker 1: but you know in the Batman way. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: And you start teasing it apart, and you start asking yourself, well,
Speaker 1: was this authentic? Was this inauthentic? Or was it or
Speaker 1: is it like Graziano says, is somewhere in between. Like
Speaker 1: for for instance, um, I think one person wrote into
Speaker 1: us once and accused one or both of us a
Speaker 1: fake laughing at each other's jokes. Do you remember this?
Speaker 1: I don't remember this. And uh, um, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a while back, and I think only it was only
Speaker 1: one person that ever ever wrote in about it, and
Speaker 1: it just made me stop and think though, because I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what we do here is is kind of a performance.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not reading from a script. We're having
Speaker 1: an authentic conversation, but it's a conversation knowing that someone
Speaker 1: else is listening to it, and like we we do
Speaker 1: make each other laugh, but maybe we do lean into
Speaker 1: it a little bit. I don't know it Like it
Speaker 1: basically comes down to exactly what Graziana said that it's
Speaker 1: it's not just fakery and authenticity, but there's this there's
Speaker 1: this huge area in between, and we may not even
Speaker 1: be aware of where we are on that spectrum in
Speaker 1: a given moment. Okay, I think we gotta take a break,
Speaker 1: but we will be right back with more than all right,
Speaker 1: We're back. Okay. So we've been discussing facial expressions emotions. Uh,
Speaker 1: Darwin's writing on the relationship between facial expressions and emotions,
Speaker 1: or not just facial expressions, I mean all kinds of
Speaker 1: body expressions and physical manifest stations and emotions. Um. And
Speaker 1: so this leads up to something that we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about for the rest of today's episode, which has
Speaker 1: come to be known as the facial feedback hypothesis. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess to have a starting place, we should talk
Speaker 1: about what some of the acceptable emotions for discussions are,
Speaker 1: because obviously there are lots of complex emotions that might
Speaker 1: be you know, little shadings of other more basic emotions
Speaker 1: or combinations of feelings commonly acknowledged basic emotions in psychology,
Speaker 1: as categorized by the American psychologist Paul Ekman. Let's hear him,
Speaker 1: how about happiness, sadness, surprise, discussed, anger, and fear. There
Speaker 1: you got your big six. Now, other psychologists have offered
Speaker 1: slightly different lists, but I think this seems to be
Speaker 1: like a good starting place. These are like six widely
Speaker 1: acknowledged basic emotions, setting aside for a second that, you know,
Speaker 1: different theories of what emotions actually are, which will come
Speaker 1: back to later in the episode. They're they're also like
Speaker 1: the constructionist ideas of emotions, which says, it's more like
Speaker 1: there's some kind of universal slider underneath all these and
Speaker 1: these are like categories that we apply to where that
Speaker 1: slider is. But for now, we're gonna work with those
Speaker 1: kind of six emotions, and so put succinctly, the facial
Speaker 1: feedback hypothesis is the idea that quote an individual's experience
Speaker 1: of emotion is influenced by feedback from their facial movements. Now,
Speaker 1: there are tons of different versions of this hypothesis that
Speaker 1: have been articulated and tested over the years. We'll we'll
Speaker 1: get more into those differences later on. We know Darwin
Speaker 1: proposed something like this in the eighteen seventies, and it's
Speaker 1: been advocated by other important figures in intellectual history. The
Speaker 1: Seminal American psychologist William James argued in his eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: work on on psychology that at least for the more
Speaker 1: basic or coarser emotions, emotions in a way simply are
Speaker 1: identical with the sensation of their physical manifestations in the body. Quote.
Speaker 1: If we fancy some strong emotion and then try to
Speaker 1: abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of
Speaker 1: its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind,
Speaker 1: no mind stuff out of which the emotion can be constituted,
Speaker 1: and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception
Speaker 1: is all that remains. So that this is a strange idea,
Speaker 1: but this did hold some sway for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that the feeling of an emotion is
Speaker 1: the feeling of changes happening in the body, including but
Speaker 1: not limited to the skeletal muscle. And this would center largely,
Speaker 1: but not entirely, on expressions that happen automatically in the
Speaker 1: facial muscles, but also all throughout the body. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: this does remind me that you know, when when one
Speaker 1: is smiling intensely um organically, you know you're not faking
Speaker 1: it at all, but like something is making you really
Speaker 1: smile and perhaps laugh really hard as well, there is
Speaker 1: a feeling of possession about it where you could imagine
Speaker 1: it's like this the physical um you know, symptoms are
Speaker 1: actually kind of like crunching your brain into this, uh,
Speaker 1: this pattern of thinking, like like you are you are happy? Now?
Speaker 1: You are laughing? Now? Do you ever get the feeling
Speaker 1: like feeling happiness in the face in the way that
Speaker 1: if the emotion has a location, it kind of feels
Speaker 1: like it's somewhere behind the face and kind of or
Speaker 1: like it's a claw, Like it's like a like a
Speaker 1: claw clamped over the face. Like a xenomorphic claw, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an alien And and then you get to
Speaker 1: the point where your face is hurting a little bit
Speaker 1: Like that is always a weird sensation where you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so happy and overcome by joy and it's
Speaker 1: physically hurting me. I wish it would stop. Well. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, I mean other emotions. I think we
Speaker 1: often do you not, least I do associate fear with
Speaker 1: a feeling in the stomach and the gut. Do you
Speaker 1: not associate sadness with kind of feelings in like the
Speaker 1: throat and the temples and behind the face? Also? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean with with with that being, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's often like there's a like a nasal activation. You know,
Speaker 1: we often don't want to think about that when we
Speaker 1: we think about, you know, weeping tears of joy, but
Speaker 1: it's often not just tears of joy. It's not of
Speaker 1: joy or a snot of sadness. But it's not nearly
Speaker 1: as poetic. But uh, but that's how it works. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in terms of like fear and you know, anxiety,
Speaker 1: I often think of it as more like a like
Speaker 1: a claw. Again, I guess it's claws, Like I can't
Speaker 1: get passive clause. But it's more it is more of
Speaker 1: an internal claw clutching not the face but the heart.
Speaker 1: I had no idea your psychic universe was all clause. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's I guess that's how I viewed the
Speaker 1: outside world. It's just a series of clause trying to
Speaker 1: um get to the heart of me. So William James also,
Speaker 1: like Darwin, addressed the subject of acting. So to to
Speaker 1: defend this idea, he brings up a hypothetical objection to
Speaker 1: his argument that goes something like this is so okay, So,
Speaker 1: William James, you say that bodily expressions of an of
Speaker 1: an emotion are identical to the feeling of the emotion.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it follow then that an actor faking in emotion
Speaker 1: is exactly the same as somebody really feeling it. And uh.
Speaker 1: And the way James phrases this is that any voluntary,
Speaker 1: cold blooded arousal of the so called manifestations of a
Speaker 1: special emotion ought to give us the emotion itself. And
Speaker 1: James answers this objection by saying, first of all, you
Speaker 1: can't really test this because a lot of the bodily
Speaker 1: manifestations of emotions are in organs that we can't voluntarily
Speaker 1: control things in the you know, in the gut and
Speaker 1: the autonomic nervous system. He gives the example of tears.
Speaker 1: Most people can't cry on command, thus they can't actually
Speaker 1: perform a voluntary, cold blooded arousal of the physical manifestations
Speaker 1: in the body. But and there are some cases where
Speaker 1: we can control those manifestations. And in these cases, James says,
Speaker 1: the problem with the objection is that it just assumes
Speaker 1: it's obviously wrong that cold blooded arousal of the manifestations
Speaker 1: gives us the emotion itself. He does not concede that
Speaker 1: this is an absurdity. Instead, he writes, quote, everyone knows
Speaker 1: how panic is increased by flight, and how giving way
Speaker 1: to the symptoms of grief or anger increases those passions themselves.
Speaker 1: Each fit of sobbing makes the sorrow more acute and
Speaker 1: calls forth another fit stronger still, until at last repose
Speaker 1: only ensues with lassitude and with the apparent exhaustion of
Speaker 1: the machinery enrage. It is notorious how we work ourselves
Speaker 1: up to a climax by repeated outbreaks of expression. Refuse
Speaker 1: to express a passion, and it dies. This is a
Speaker 1: famous quote here, uh count ten before venting your anger,
Speaker 1: and its occasion seems ridiculous. Whistling to keep up courage
Speaker 1: is no mere figure of speech. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: sit all day in a moping posture, sigh and reply
Speaker 1: to everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers.
Speaker 1: There's no more valuable precept in moral education than this,
Speaker 1: as all who have experience no. If we wish to
Speaker 1: conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must assiduously and
Speaker 1: in the first instance, cold bloodedly go through the outward
Speaker 1: movements of these contrary dispositions which we prefer to cultivate.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of the origin of fake it
Speaker 1: till you make it right yeah, or um yeah, or
Speaker 1: telling people to smile and they'll be happy. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's uh yeah, this this, I mean, he puts it
Speaker 1: so well, and my my response is both yes and no,
Speaker 1: like you know this, this feels absolutely true, but also
Speaker 1: like you know, so many different objections pop up as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, for starters, the idea of like refused to
Speaker 1: express a passion and it dies. I mean that runs
Speaker 1: counter to a lot of at least you know, so
Speaker 1: certainly to the advice that is often given about passions
Speaker 1: and how we should not bury them inside of us,
Speaker 1: because it won't die if it is buried inside. It's
Speaker 1: that it will find a way out, and it might
Speaker 1: not find its way out in in a in a
Speaker 1: way or at least at a time. That is uh,
Speaker 1: that that that that is beneficial. Well, I I am
Speaker 1: also of two minds about this, um and the idea
Speaker 1: of yeah, refused to express express a passion and it dies. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I've talked on the podcast before about how
Speaker 1: I'm often skeptical of the benefits of what people call venting,
Speaker 1: though at the same time, I don't think it's good to,
Speaker 1: you know, have strong feelings about something and have nobody
Speaker 1: to talk to them about, you know, and when you
Speaker 1: can't talk about something that is psychologically stressful, it's a
Speaker 1: burden on you. And so like, on one hand, you
Speaker 1: do need to be able to talk about things, but
Speaker 1: there's this thing people call venting, which is like something
Speaker 1: is bothering them and they just like continually express their
Speaker 1: frustration and a kind of repetitive pattern about it. I
Speaker 1: tend to notice throughout my life that this in myself
Speaker 1: and in others. This doesn't actually make you feel better
Speaker 1: that the venting process, I think most of the time
Speaker 1: just makes you matter and matter. You work yourself up
Speaker 1: into a state where the problem assumes a larger posture
Speaker 1: than it did to begin with. And you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like speaking aloud, that's sort of venting, because it seems
Speaker 1: like that sort of a venting has a very has
Speaker 1: a lot in common with the things that go on
Speaker 1: inside the mind and the default mode network as we
Speaker 1: ruminate over something some worry we we we kind of
Speaker 1: rehearse for disasters, for example, or we um we essentially
Speaker 1: fantasize about terrible things occurring and um, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of the same practice, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, it's it's filling your mind with
Speaker 1: um some sort of negati of outcome be be it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're yelling at somebody or um, you know,
Speaker 1: we're bad things happening to you, kind of rehearsals for disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the psychological process of rumination where you where you just
Speaker 1: like rehearse the worst possible scenarios in your mind over
Speaker 1: and over again is terrible. But then the idea here though,
Speaker 1: is there could be like a feedback loop if you're
Speaker 1: actually if if you're expressing it bodily and facially, then
Speaker 1: it's just gonna potentially make things worse. Yeah, um and
Speaker 1: I do think to some extent that's true. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously we're dealing with something that's very complicated, and that's
Speaker 1: not a surprise because it involves emotions. I think emotions
Speaker 1: are I mean, we'll go ahead and say today, emotions
Speaker 1: are one of the most difficult things to study scientifically,
Speaker 1: I think, um and and so studies about them are
Speaker 1: often plagued with problems of inconsistency and how the emotions
Speaker 1: are characterized, how they're measured, How exactly do you quantify
Speaker 1: emotional states. It's one of the most difficult problems in
Speaker 1: all of science. I think, Yeah, how do you even
Speaker 1: agree on the base terminology? And then if you end
Speaker 1: up creating something that seems like a useful explanation, is
Speaker 1: it ultimately just kind of a you know, a system
Speaker 1: of metaphors to try and make sense of this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like the movie, the Pixar
Speaker 1: movie inside Out. Oh, I hadn't seen it. A wonderful
Speaker 1: movie about about emotions, uh, you know, but ultimately like
Speaker 1: there are not you know, a series of individuals inside
Speaker 1: of your head arguing with each other and going on adventures. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you know, you you worry too about like to
Speaker 1: what extent you end up like going too far in
Speaker 1: one of these directions and in really trying to uh
Speaker 1: you know, apply language to the the the un language
Speaker 1: complexity of the mind. But obviously, then again, emotions are
Speaker 1: one of the most important features of our entire lives,
Speaker 1: and so psychology should be taking a crack and understanding them.
Speaker 1: And so I guess that brings us back to the
Speaker 1: back to this question of the facial feedback hypothesis. If
Speaker 1: it's true that movements of the facial muscles or facial
Speaker 1: expressions do contribute to our underlie ing emotional states, they
Speaker 1: don't just follow from them, but they feed back into
Speaker 1: them and in some way control them. Is there evidence
Speaker 1: for that? Is there evidence that that's true? And I
Speaker 1: guess that's what we should discuss next. So one thing
Speaker 1: we absolutely do not lack for is studies on this subject.
Speaker 1: The facial feedback hypothesis is huge, and it's a very
Speaker 1: complicated subject with a massive and conflicting research history. There's
Speaker 1: no way to discuss all these studies, but in a
Speaker 1: minute we will be looking at a recent meta analysis
Speaker 1: paper that sort of gives an overview of these findings. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing is like problems with methodology we were just
Speaker 1: alluding to and how you study things like the relationship
Speaker 1: between facial expressions and emotions. Of course, you can just
Speaker 1: ask people to smile or frown or do things with
Speaker 1: their face and then ask them how they feel. But
Speaker 1: these kinds of experiments would have some obvious limitations, right,
Speaker 1: like if people are aware of being asked to smile,
Speaker 1: uh this knowledge could change how they were poor their feelings,
Speaker 1: and it could bias the results. You could have acquiescence bias,
Speaker 1: where you know, people in an experiment tend to just
Speaker 1: sort of try to figure out what the experimenters want
Speaker 1: and give them those types of results, or more generally,
Speaker 1: what are referred to uh as demand characteristics where but
Speaker 1: where things emerge in the research environment that would not
Speaker 1: emerge naturally. So different tests devised over the years have
Speaker 1: tried to get around this a number of ways, trying
Speaker 1: to like contort the facial muscles and see if that
Speaker 1: does something to emotional states without just saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: could you please frown for a minute, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna ask you to do a questionnaire. So, like, one
Speaker 1: type of thing is the pin in the mouth study.
Speaker 1: So here's one where you put a pin either between
Speaker 1: your lips or you put a pin between your teeth.
Speaker 1: When you put a pin between your lips, it just
Speaker 1: happens to form your face into a frown. When you
Speaker 1: put a pin between your teeth, it happens to induce
Speaker 1: the same muscles that you would use in a smile.
Speaker 1: So that's been used in a number of studies. Another
Speaker 1: thing is like asking participants to say a lot of
Speaker 1: certain vowels. For example, awe sounds incidentally produced smile posture
Speaker 1: and oh sounds incidentally produced frown posture. And some research
Speaker 1: has found, for example, that awe sounds people make people
Speaker 1: self report more happy or pleasant feelings. And I've even
Speaker 1: seen this connected to the prevalence of awe sounds and
Speaker 1: religious chance. I thought that's kind of an interesting idea there,
Speaker 1: like halla, hallelujah, all kinds of I mean that awe
Speaker 1: sounds are more prevalent around the world and religious chants
Speaker 1: than ow sounds, and this could be because they induce
Speaker 1: more pleasant mental states. Now where does own fall? Then
Speaker 1: hopefully ow would be between the two? Right maybe? But
Speaker 1: out of this this huge history of of all these
Speaker 1: different studies, uh, just this year we got this big
Speaker 1: meta analysis pulled together tabulating a hundred thirty eight different
Speaker 1: studies on the effect. It was by Nicholas A. Coles,
Speaker 1: Jeff T. Larson, and Heather C. Lynch, published in Psychological
Speaker 1: Bulletin in twenty nineteen. And so, okay, you might think
Speaker 1: that given that many studies, a hundred and thirty eight studies,
Speaker 1: now we should have a really solid body of evidence
Speaker 1: converging on a clear consensus answer. Uh. And in one
Speaker 1: broad sense that's true, and in many more specific senses
Speaker 1: it's not true to quote the authors here. Unfortunately, more
Speaker 1: than a centuries worth of research has not yet clarified
Speaker 1: whether facial feedback effects are reliable. For example, researchers have
Speaker 1: produced a variety of theoretical disagreements about win facial feedback
Speaker 1: effects should emerge, but it remains unclear which, if any
Speaker 1: of these theories are correct. Furthermore, seventeen labs recently found
Speaker 1: that even the most seminal demonstration of facial feedback effects
Speaker 1: is not clearly replicable. Uh so, and this was a
Speaker 1: big problem. So like one of the biggest studies it was.
Speaker 1: It was a pin in the mouth study that found that,
Speaker 1: you know, putting a pin between the t made people
Speaker 1: report more happy emotions than putting it between the lips.
Speaker 1: Uh that that was big. But then just recently a
Speaker 1: bunch of abs tried to replicate it and they couldn't.
Speaker 1: So here here's this big question what all these studies
Speaker 1: add up to. So here's where this new meta analysis
Speaker 1: comes in. Quote amid this uncertainty, we provide a narrative
Speaker 1: review of research on the facial feedback hypothesis and a
Speaker 1: meta analysis of all available experimental evidence. So they're pulling
Speaker 1: all the studies together and trying to see if they
Speaker 1: can crunch the numbers and figure out what is shown overall.
Speaker 1: So I think maybe we should take another break and
Speaker 1: then when we come back we can get into the
Speaker 1: results of this study. Thank alright, we're back. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're looking at a meta analysis of all of these,
Speaker 1: uh these different studies about facial feedback hypothesis, and uh
Speaker 1: hopefully like some sense will emerge from it, all, right,
Speaker 1: they we'll have some some some some general um you know,
Speaker 1: ideas that we can draw from it. Right, we will
Speaker 1: get some. We there are other things that are left unanswered.
Speaker 1: So one of the things is that we we alluded
Speaker 1: to all these different problems. And how you study something
Speaker 1: like the facial feedback hypothesis, uh like, The authors identify
Speaker 1: four major theoretical disagreements in how people even approach the subject.
Speaker 1: To begin with, I'll try to simplify them as briefly
Speaker 1: as I can. One is modulation versus initiation. Okay, So
Speaker 1: one one view says that emotions are maintained and modulated
Speaker 1: by body expressions. So you're genuinely happy, You're feeling happy,
Speaker 1: and that makes you smile, and then the smile can
Speaker 1: maintain and intensify the happiness, or suppressing the smile can
Speaker 1: put a damper on the happiness. This is the modulation hypothesis. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the other view would say that at least some emotions
Speaker 1: can be created out of nothing with facial feedback alone.
Speaker 1: So maybe you're feeling neutral, but you make yourself frowned
Speaker 1: for five minutes and you actually end up feeling sad.
Speaker 1: This is the initiation hypothesis, So the author is no
Speaker 1: something interesting here that maybe we wouldn't have thought about otherwise. Uh.
Speaker 1: They know that this distinction assumes that emotional experiences have
Speaker 1: a beginning and an ending, that they are discreet rather
Speaker 1: than continuous and always in flux. Like if you feel happy,
Speaker 1: can you pinpoint the moment when you started feeling happy?
Speaker 1: And was there no happiness before? Or was it just
Speaker 1: something that got turned up in amplitude? But was there before? Uh?
Speaker 1: This is an interesting question, like our emotions discrete things
Speaker 1: that can begin an end, or they part of a
Speaker 1: continuous media that's always in flux with maybe Uh, And
Speaker 1: of course if they are, there's maybe no difference between
Speaker 1: initiation and modulation. Yeah, it makes me think it's like
Speaker 1: it's like a flow state and non emotional state. I've
Speaker 1: never heard it put like that. ID have to think
Speaker 1: about that because generally when I think about being in
Speaker 1: a flow state, I think about it being happiness, because
Speaker 1: like it's you're content, you're not you know, you're totally
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the task at hand, and you're not uh,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about anything else. But then again, is
Speaker 1: it is it really happiness or is it like just
Speaker 1: sort of removal from the uh you know, the wheel
Speaker 1: of emotions to some extent, disengaging from the default mode network,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Uh yeah, and the default mode network
Speaker 1: sometimes just seems like kind of a roulette wheel of
Speaker 1: emotions that it's just spin it and let's just see
Speaker 1: what what the what the universe has for me right now?
Speaker 1: Am I gonna be happy in the next minute? Or sad?
Speaker 1: It's like you or I have and feel like I
Speaker 1: just I have no idea, And for me it's like
Speaker 1: which of your failures would you like to contemplate? Yeah? Default? Okay,
Speaker 1: So next you've got discreet versus dimensional emotional experience. So
Speaker 1: our happiness, anger, sadness all that. Are they discrete categories?
Speaker 1: Do these basic emotions exist as sort of separate programs
Speaker 1: within the brain or can they all be reduced to
Speaker 1: some underlying phenomena presenting at different levels of intensity and valence.
Speaker 1: So the basic idea here is like, imagine you've got
Speaker 1: a couple of sliders in your brain. One is a
Speaker 1: slider that's the valence is this positive or negative? And
Speaker 1: then the other slider is the level of arousal. Are
Speaker 1: you high? High? Arousal or low arousal, and those two sliders,
Speaker 1: positioned at different places, actually give you the things you
Speaker 1: think of as your normal emotions. The names of the
Speaker 1: emotions are just sort of like categories that we apply
Speaker 1: based on contextual clues. That's a possibility. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: thinking a little about this yesterday because I was working
Speaker 1: on another episode's notes and I was listening to a
Speaker 1: little Jackson Brown was planned um Fountain of Sorrow, and
Speaker 1: I had to stop. It's like, because I was thinking,
Speaker 1: is this is this song making me feel good or bad?
Speaker 1: Is it making me happy or sad? It's like, it's
Speaker 1: but it's neither, you know, it's it's this mix of both.
Speaker 1: Like it's a kind of a sad, bittersweet song that's
Speaker 1: beautifully recorded and I have, you know, nostalgia for it,
Speaker 1: but it's also you know, it's complicated. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of moments where you can start to wonder
Speaker 1: if this is I think sometimes called like the constructionist
Speaker 1: or core affect idea of emotions, where they're not these
Speaker 1: discrete programs running in the brain, but they they're the
Speaker 1: same thing. They're the same part of the same continuous
Speaker 1: quantity and we just like apply categories to different zones
Speaker 1: on this graph. Basically, uh, and and depending on what
Speaker 1: the contextual clues are, because one level of high arousal
Speaker 1: and negative emotion in one state might feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: like anger and agitation, and in another state it might
Speaker 1: be more like sadness, intense sadness. But obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know which of these theories of emotion is
Speaker 1: the correct one. But that's another thing that's at play
Speaker 1: in all these studies. People are working off different theories
Speaker 1: of emotion when they're trying to study whether emotions can
Speaker 1: be modulated or caused by facial movements. Next big question
Speaker 1: is awareness involved. If facial feedback does influence our emotions,
Speaker 1: do you have to be consciously aware of the face
Speaker 1: you're making or how you're moving your muscles, Like I
Speaker 1: feel myself smiling. I know that smiles mean happiness, so
Speaker 1: I feel happy? Or do these facial movements if the
Speaker 1: facial feedback hypothesis is correct, do these facial movements influence
Speaker 1: our emotions unconsciously through uh, you know, through feedback mechanisms
Speaker 1: that happen outside of our awareness. Huh, Well, my experience
Speaker 1: for whatever that's worth. I find that being aware of
Speaker 1: your happiness is once you're fire away to potentially bring
Speaker 1: it down. You know, that's a good point. Like so,
Speaker 1: but but then again, I don't know how that but
Speaker 1: that actually relates to naither research here. Well, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to think yourself happy, but it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to think yourself sad. Now, one thing we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: is like some of those studies are are aimed at
Speaker 1: trying to show that the the effect happens without conscious awareness,
Speaker 1: Like the pin in the mouth study. Right, if you
Speaker 1: put a pin between people's teeth and that makes them
Speaker 1: feel happier, I'll be they're not going to be aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that they're smiling. They've just got a
Speaker 1: pin in their teeth. Uh, So that for what? And
Speaker 1: there were studies that showed something like that, I think
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen eighties. However, that was the study
Speaker 1: that failed replication in recent years, so people tried to
Speaker 1: do the experiment again didn't get the same result. That
Speaker 1: means that either there was something wrong with the initial
Speaker 1: experiment or with all the replication attempts, or they could
Speaker 1: both be sound but arriving at different results. Because there's
Speaker 1: some important difference that's not being controlled for their So
Speaker 1: that that's something I don't know the answer to yet.
Speaker 1: I think I saw there might be a study that
Speaker 1: was trying to resolve whatever difference was going on there,
Speaker 1: but but I I didn't have time to look into that.
Speaker 1: One more big question. Does facial feedback have an effect
Speaker 1: on affective judgments? So not just how you feel, but
Speaker 1: what you think about other things? You know, third parties.
Speaker 1: What what do you think about this cup? What do
Speaker 1: you think about this microphone? I'm sorry that a cup
Speaker 1: is so often an example that we invoke on in
Speaker 1: the moment here and it's a it's either going to
Speaker 1: be that or the foam soundproofing board. So so, but
Speaker 1: what do you think about these things? So, if our
Speaker 1: facial expressions modulate our emotions, do they do just that
Speaker 1: or do they also change the ways that we make
Speaker 1: judgments about these external objects, people and and situations. And
Speaker 1: the authors called this the affective judgments hypothesis. Uh, disfrowning
Speaker 1: make you view another person more negatively. So obviously, all
Speaker 1: these theoretical disagreements make a meta analysis of the facial
Speaker 1: feedback hypothesis really difficult, because despite how many studies there are. Now,
Speaker 1: they're not all testing exactly the same thing, they're not
Speaker 1: all working from the same theoretical framework. So the authors
Speaker 1: had to like code for all these differences in what's
Speaker 1: being tested in each study, as well as lots of
Speaker 1: other moderators, including how the facial feedback was manipulated for example,
Speaker 1: you know, the pin and the teeth, or just asking
Speaker 1: people to do a facial pose, or even experimenting with
Speaker 1: people who have had botoxic injections that restrict facial movement.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting on yeah, uh. And then other moderators
Speaker 1: like the timing of measurement, uh, the gender for example,
Speaker 1: some earlier research had found that maybe men were more
Speaker 1: susceptible to body feedback on average than women. Uh, and
Speaker 1: weather subjects were aware of being video recorded and things
Speaker 1: like that. Alright, so time for the results. Uh. The
Speaker 1: I would say, the top line here is that some
Speaker 1: facial feedback effects seem to be real, but the effect
Speaker 1: is not huge. The overall body of research suggests that
Speaker 1: the effect is real, it is significant, but it's relatively small,
Speaker 1: and it's variable based on a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: like on these theoretical disagreements and moderating variables that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, So just a few key selections from the
Speaker 1: specifics of the results. UH One is this question about
Speaker 1: initiation versus modulation, Right, can facial feedback only influence pre
Speaker 1: existing emotions or can it actually create new emotional experiences
Speaker 1: from a starting neutral state, And the evidence shows it
Speaker 1: can definitely do both. In fact, contrary to many historical
Speaker 1: predictions and assumptions, the initiation of emotions through facial posing
Speaker 1: is pretty well supported by evidence and seems to be
Speaker 1: pretty easy to demonstrate. So it's not just the modulation
Speaker 1: of what you're already feeling. You. They've shown a bunch
Speaker 1: of times now that you can just take people, make
Speaker 1: them do a facial pose and it does sort of
Speaker 1: generate an emotion from out of nowhere. However, there is
Speaker 1: more evidence for some emotions than others, like that there
Speaker 1: is evidence of a small facial feedback effect for most emotions,
Speaker 1: but not for a couple of key ones, surprise and fear.
Speaker 1: So people who make a happy face, the evidence shows,
Speaker 1: on average, will tend to feel more happy. But if
Speaker 1: you make a surprised face or a fearful face, there
Speaker 1: is not yet good evidence that you will feel those
Speaker 1: two emotions, though the authors caution this conclusion because they
Speaker 1: say there aren't a whole lot of studies on the
Speaker 1: feedback effect for fear and surprise is somehow I can
Speaker 1: really see how this would be the case for surprise.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you could simulate surprise just by
Speaker 1: putting a surprise face on the Surprise seems so much
Speaker 1: more really dependent on actual facts of your surroundings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if if part of this might be that
Speaker 1: they're just you know, if we go back to you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about with Graziano and his um um,
Speaker 1: you know, monkey A and Monkey B scenario. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: is there ever a necessity to to fake surprise? I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly if there's a surprise birthday party and you knew
Speaker 1: about it and you're like, oh yeah, or your people
Speaker 1: suck at that, right, Yeah, I mean we we do,
Speaker 1: Like when you I think most of us, if we
Speaker 1: were asked to fake surprise, we would we would have
Speaker 1: a hard time doing anything convincing, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: generally the kind of thing where again it's a it's
Speaker 1: a surprise party that you knew about, or you're humoring
Speaker 1: like a child's um uh, you know, game of of
Speaker 1: scaring you or something, whereas faking um you know, these
Speaker 1: other emotions would have much more advantage and are much
Speaker 1: more a part of the human emotional deception tool chest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right, though, I just do want to
Speaker 1: reiterate again their their caution that this may just be
Speaker 1: because there are fewer studies on on these emotions, and
Speaker 1: we don't know that in a really strong way. But
Speaker 1: the evidence for those two emotions is not as strong
Speaker 1: as it is for all the others, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever been though accused of faking fear,
Speaker 1: you know, like no one said, No one's ever written
Speaker 1: into the show and said you, I don't think you
Speaker 1: were really afraid when you were talking about this particular
Speaker 1: frightening concept. I think you were faking your fear. I've
Speaker 1: never thought about this before. But what emotion is most
Speaker 1: often acted badly in movies? What emotion are people the
Speaker 1: worst at trying to portray in a fictional scenario? Oh man,
Speaker 1: I've seen them. I've seen them all done poorly, and
Speaker 1: it contain spectacular in any case. I mean, with fear
Speaker 1: and surprise, you know, we can certainly think to really affect,
Speaker 1: like when it's done well through whatever acting method is employed,
Speaker 1: like it really sticks in your mind. It's a reason
Speaker 1: that we how many of us right now are thinking
Speaker 1: of Donald Sutherland from the the an Invasion of the
Speaker 1: Body Snatchers film. You know, it's such an iconic cinematic
Speaker 1: uh you know, moment of just absolute um fear, right,
Speaker 1: But a lot of directors actually go out of their
Speaker 1: way to create real surprises on sets for the actors
Speaker 1: when they want to get a truly shocked and surprised response.
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking of the scene and Alien where the
Speaker 1: thing bursts out of John Hurt's chest. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: the first time the actors didn't know exactly what was
Speaker 1: going to happen in that scene. I think they thought
Speaker 1: something was going to happen, but they didn't have all
Speaker 1: the details. I think an important thing that Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: was going for there was trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: they got a real look of shock on their faces.
Speaker 1: May because even though they were all great actors, he
Speaker 1: didn't trust them enough with surprise. Yeah, there are there
Speaker 1: are a number of different filmmaking stories about that right
Speaker 1: where where you end up having this rift between the
Speaker 1: actors and the director because the director assumes that they
Speaker 1: need to tell some sort of stunt to get that
Speaker 1: kind of emotion out of them. Um. Was it the
Speaker 1: Exorcist where they were allegations or stories about him like
Speaker 1: firing Uh, like a firearm being discharged on the set
Speaker 1: to make all the actors beyond edge. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of bad stories about the production of The Exorcist. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: we got to go back to this. So. Um a
Speaker 1: couple more things in their results. Is awareness necessary? Do
Speaker 1: you have to be aware that you're expressing an emotion
Speaker 1: on your face for the expression to influence your feelings?
Speaker 1: The results did not demonstrate that you have to be aware,
Speaker 1: but they also don't disconfirm there might be some role
Speaker 1: for self perception in some cases. Uh. Do facial movements
Speaker 1: influence affective judgments, you know, judging other things? The authors
Speaker 1: found this question, unlike the general question of facial feedback,
Speaker 1: suffered from publication bias, uh and so. And that's of course,
Speaker 1: when studies confirming and effect are more likely to be
Speaker 1: published than the same studies if they had disconfirmed the effect.
Speaker 1: Uh and so. When that bias was corrected for the
Speaker 1: results did not yet indicate strong evidence for facial expressions
Speaker 1: changing affect of judgment. However, the author's caution against abandoning
Speaker 1: this line of inquiry because this one could be highly
Speaker 1: context dependent. They point out that there's some other research
Speaker 1: in psychology that suggests emotions only change our judgments about
Speaker 1: external stimuli in some contexts, maybe like when emotion seems
Speaker 1: relevant to the thing you're judging. More research is needed
Speaker 1: here to invoke a cliche. But then then they also
Speaker 1: talk about how their findings interact with some competing psychological
Speaker 1: theories on the nature of emotion, like we talked about earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that this question of our emotions like happiness
Speaker 1: and anger and fear discrete programs within the brain or
Speaker 1: are they contextual categorizations of different variations of intensity and valance?
Speaker 1: With this more basic core affect and the results of
Speaker 1: the meta analysis show that facial feedback can influence not
Speaker 1: only reports of basic emotions, but dimensional reports that would
Speaker 1: be in line with the theory of emotions more based
Speaker 1: on core affect. So facial feedback doesn't really solve this question.
Speaker 1: As best I can tell, it could be consistent with
Speaker 1: either way of looking at what emotions are uh. They
Speaker 1: also found that results even within the same categories were
Speaker 1: fairly variable, suggesting that there were influences on these effects
Speaker 1: that are not recorded in the data and that they
Speaker 1: weren't able to test. And one example they give of
Speaker 1: what this might be is perhaps facial feedback effects are
Speaker 1: stronger in populations that are on average more quote attentive
Speaker 1: to their bodily cues, including but not limited to appropriate
Speaker 1: receptive cue is from the face. And of course appropriate
Speaker 1: reception is our sensation. It is when we have more
Speaker 1: than five senses, right, It's one of the body senses
Speaker 1: that lets us know where the parts of our body are.
Speaker 1: It's how you can know where your hands are even
Speaker 1: when your eyes are closed. Um. And so it's this
Speaker 1: part of this approprio sceptive sense uh and and this
Speaker 1: could be an influencing factor. But the studies, of course
Speaker 1: haven't tried to record or measure this. And I take
Speaker 1: this to mean that people who have stronger senses of
Speaker 1: inter reception in general, the sensations within their own bodies,
Speaker 1: those people might be more sensitive to feelings created by
Speaker 1: the movements of the muscles in their face. And they
Speaker 1: also cite maybe different exclusion criteria on different studies could
Speaker 1: have influenced why some of the results are so variable.
Speaker 1: But they say in the end that quote, the cumulative
Speaker 1: evidence to date suggests that facial feedback does indeed influence
Speaker 1: emotional experience, given all the caveats we just talked about.
Speaker 1: So I think that's interesting. So, like, what are some
Speaker 1: takeaways from this Number One? We don't know yet when
Speaker 1: and why the effects will be largest, and in general,
Speaker 1: the effects are real but kind of small. Though you
Speaker 1: could see how this knowledge could be applied to some
Speaker 1: kind of therapeutic uses. I think we probably don't know
Speaker 1: enough about it to to use it most effectively that
Speaker 1: way yet. But say, if you are trying to test
Speaker 1: and see, you know, could I make myself feel better
Speaker 1: by just making my face smile. It's it's at least
Speaker 1: one of those things where I think the risks and
Speaker 1: downsides associated with trying that out are probably extremely low, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if you're not like to come back
Speaker 1: to the yoga example, like if one does experiment with
Speaker 1: smiling during certain poses, like you're not you're also doing
Speaker 1: all the yoga, you're doing the you know, there's also
Speaker 1: the experience of say, you know, working with the teacher,
Speaker 1: of being in the space. They're all these other factors
Speaker 1: that are contributing, and you're not going to make or
Speaker 1: break it uh necessarily by engaging and uh and this
Speaker 1: smiling exercise. Uh. Likewise, it should point out though, that
Speaker 1: that there are other things that exercise the one does
Speaker 1: with your your face that I would that could possibly
Speaker 1: play a role here, being, for instance, just moving your
Speaker 1: face around in hot ways, or making what is referred
Speaker 1: to as line and face where you can just make
Speaker 1: an exaggerated like uh, you know, childish, cartoonish monster face
Speaker 1: out of your own face, and like that can be
Speaker 1: kind of a way of potentially just like clearing whatever
Speaker 1: is physically going on with your face that could be
Speaker 1: exerting this mild influence on your emotional disposition. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I I wouldn't be surprised if there could be like
Speaker 1: a making monster faces in the mirror therapy kind of thing,
Speaker 1: Like you make your monster faces in the mirror and
Speaker 1: then there's some kind of change in the emotional centers
Speaker 1: of the brain caused by these facial muscle movements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like maybe it is a signaling. Um, I mean to
Speaker 1: get back to the lion thing. Maybe it is some
Speaker 1: sort of like dominance and and um uh you know
Speaker 1: aggression that is related. Or maybe it's simply like your
Speaker 1: brain is not that familiar with it, Like do I
Speaker 1: ever make lion face? Uh the rest of the time
Speaker 1: in my life? I don't think I really do. So
Speaker 1: maybe my I'm just I don't have like a bunch
Speaker 1: of you know, emotional material just like lined up for
Speaker 1: that particular facial fee. Yeah, And so I would emphasize
Speaker 1: again like obviously we don't know how effective this could
Speaker 1: be in the long run. It like you say, you
Speaker 1: were trying to do something really serious like battle depression
Speaker 1: or something. We're not necessarily saying this is the fix
Speaker 1: because again the effects are small. We don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how effective it would be that kind of thing, or
Speaker 1: what way is what ways you could manipulate the scenario
Speaker 1: to make it more effective. But like I said, this
Speaker 1: is something that does seem like a very low risk
Speaker 1: kind of thing to try if you are trying to
Speaker 1: manipulate your own moods and emotions, and certainly much you know,
Speaker 1: lower risk than a lot of the things people actually
Speaker 1: do to try to regulate their emotions, like self medicating
Speaker 1: with drugs and alcohol and all that, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: of course, you know, again, I do want to come
Speaker 1: back to the fact that there are cultural differences in
Speaker 1: the way that we use smiles and um and react
Speaker 1: to smiles. So I mean that's always something to keep
Speaker 1: in mind as well, like is it a given culture
Speaker 1: aware smiling is done more given culture or even a
Speaker 1: given individual, where smiling when embarrassed and when embarrassed is
Speaker 1: more of a you know, a typical feature, Like how
Speaker 1: would that influence any of this? Yeah, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: could contribute. Yeah, And then also thinking about like the
Speaker 1: full body scenario we're talking about earlier with the with
Speaker 1: the the hypothetical apes reacting to each other, Like if
Speaker 1: if you're dealing with a smile and it's just you know,
Speaker 1: in some of these experiments and it's just isolated to
Speaker 1: the face, Uh, is that truly the expression or is
Speaker 1: the is this should the smile be part of a
Speaker 1: like a broader you know, a physical manifestation. Well, another
Speaker 1: thing that makes me think of is, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this came up a little bit when we're thing about
Speaker 1: the idea of research that use people who had botox
Speaker 1: injections in the face, uh to see you know, if
Speaker 1: that affected their emotional cognition. This makes me think more
Speaker 1: generally about the relationship between skeletal muscle in the face
Speaker 1: and throughout the body and our emotional states and whether
Speaker 1: there could be relationships there that we don't fully understand yet,
Speaker 1: but that how you use your body contributes to your
Speaker 1: state of mind at resolutely. But you know, the great
Speaker 1: thing about all this is that is that this is
Speaker 1: a wonderful area for individual experience and feedback on this episode.
Speaker 1: Like everybody out there has experienced with emotions and have
Speaker 1: you ever smiled? Have you ever smiled? Um? Have you
Speaker 1: ever frowned? I mean, you know, we've discussed cultural differences
Speaker 1: in individual differences, so I would I would love to
Speaker 1: hear some details about about that from folks out there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, what are your experiences with being told to smile?
Speaker 1: What are your experiences with being you know, encouraged to
Speaker 1: smile during yoga? Or laughter? Yoga is a whole other area.
Speaker 1: We're talking more about laughter than than just smiling alone there,
Speaker 1: but that's very much a situation where the idea is
Speaker 1: pretend to laugh until you were laughing. And I've I've
Speaker 1: I've tried that. I tried it a few times, and
Speaker 1: I find that it works to like a reasonable degree.
Speaker 1: Like I don't feel like laughter has possessed me bodily,
Speaker 1: like there's some sort of a you know, a demon
Speaker 1: uh leeching into me. But I do find and myself
Speaker 1: you're looking for well, I don't know. I've not that
Speaker 1: I'm necessarily looking for it, but I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: people um overcome with laughter and scenarios like that. Like basically,
Speaker 1: when I was in high school, I think I visited
Speaker 1: a church with a friend where they were doing some
Speaker 1: form of faith healing. I'm not sure what the terminology
Speaker 1: is for it, but where an individual would be touched
Speaker 1: by the pastor and instead of just simply like you know,
Speaker 1: falling to the floor being healed of their ailment, they
Speaker 1: would begin laughing hysterically. That was the physical manifestation of
Speaker 1: being touched with you know, the Holy Spirit or whatever
Speaker 1: they the description was. So I guess I was kind
Speaker 1: of I could not help but think of that when
Speaker 1: engaging in laughter yoga, and and so I just want
Speaker 1: to drive home that my experience was not a situation
Speaker 1: of being overcome by you know, out of control laughter.
Speaker 1: But then again, the prime wasn't there for that to
Speaker 1: be the case either. So you know, could be a
Speaker 1: situation where if I were entering into it and people
Speaker 1: were saying, yeah, we're gonna do laughter yoga and you're
Speaker 1: gonna lose control of your body, then perhaps that would
Speaker 1: be more inclined to like to fall into that scenario.
Speaker 1: Laughter is weird, is what I'm saying. It is. It
Speaker 1: is weird. Yeah, It's something we can come back to again.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, if you have any any tidbits from
Speaker 1: your life that you would like to share with us,
Speaker 1: let us know. In the meantime, check out stuff to
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