emotionq

Sign. 1. A facial expression, body movement, or tone of voice indicative of emotion. 2. Specifically, e.g., a fist of anger, a jaw-droop in surprise, or a throat-clear of uncertainty.

Usage: We have a rich vocabulary of emotion cues showing how we feel about ourselves and others. In the realm of emotion, words are often less trustworthy than nonverbal signs. This is because the latter cues are usually unintentional, involuntary, and unconscious. While some emotion cues (see, e.g., POUT and SMILE) are well known, many (see, e.g., ADAM'S-APPLE-JUMP and TENSE-MOUTH) have neither common names nor listings in standard verbal dictionaries.

Anatomy I (face). 1. Eye, nose, mouth, throat, and laryngeal openings are controlled by muscles and nerves from tissues of ancient pharyngeal arches. Thus, a. we may close (i.e., constrict) our facial features to show negative emotion (e.g., frown, throat-clear), and b. open (i.e., dilate) them to show pleasant feelings and moods (e.g., eyebrow-raise, laugh). 2. Facial flushing is visible as sympathetic nerves respond to fight-or-flight impulses (e.g., from embarrassment due to stranger anxiety).

Anatomy II (body). 1. A powerful feeling may release neck reflexes (e.g., of the ATNR), resulting in hand-behind-head gestures or hyperextended reaching cues. 2. Fear may show as the amygdala activates our body's protective freeze reaction. 3. Horror may show in the two-handed lip-touch cue.

Anatomy III (face and body). "At the neuromuscular level emotion is primarily facial activity and facial patterning, and secondarily it is bodily (postural-gestural, visceral, and sometimes vocal) response" (Izard 1971:185; but note that Izard's hypothesis, because it is advanced by a specialist on the human face, is doubtful; see, e.g., ENTERIC BRAIN).

RESEARCH REPORTS: There is long-standing debate about emotion cues: are they learned or innate? Clearly, both nature and nurture (i.e, culture [see, e.g., ISOPRAXISM]) play roles, but for any given cue (see, e.g., EYE-BLINK) one or the other may predominate. 1. ". . . the different races of man express their emotions and sensations with remarkable uniformity throughout the world" (Darwin 1872:130-31). 2. ". . . there are probably no universal symbols of emotional states" (Birdwhistell 1970:30). 3. ". . . while the facial muscles which move when a particular affect is aroused are the same across cultures, the evoking stimuli, the linked effects, the display rules and the behavioral consequences all can vary enormously from one culture to another (Ekman and Friesen 1969:73). 4. "Even though no credible research indicates that facial expressions are entirely learned, that does not mean that learning perspectives have no place in our understanding of facial expressions" (Richmond, et al. 1991:76).

Neuro-notes I. Unlike fish, amphibians, and reptiles, we are strongly emotional beings who run "hot" or "cold," and rarely feel neutral about the days of our lives. Emotion cues commence with activity in the brain's limbic system. When stimulated, its septum, e.g. (a pleasure area of the forebrain), may arouse facial expressions of happiness and joy. With those we love, the mammalian brain's cingulate gyrus inspires grooming, nuzzling, and cuddle cues.

Neuro-notes II. PET studies indicate that, in right-handed normal subjects, the right inferior frontal cortex is activated during the assessment of facial emotion (Nakamura et al., 1999).

See also MAMMALIAN BRAIN, NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION, NONVERBAL RELEASE.

See also AFFILIATIVE CUE, AVERSIVE CUE.

IMMEDIACY

Emotion cue. 1. The degree to which a non-verbal message conveys liking or disliking. 2. Non-verbally, an expression of emotional attachment (or a feeling of closeness) to another person. 3. In 1981, Albert Mehrabian defined immediacy as nonverbal signs that show heightened sensory stimulation, attentiveness and liking.

Usage. Immediacy, which most often refers to friendly rather than unfriendly cues, may show in a. angular distance, b. body alignment, c. body-lean, d. cut-off, e. eye contact, f. hand-reach signs, g. isopraxism, h. love signals, l. palm-up signs, j. perfume cues, k. personal distance, l. pupil size, m. rapport, n. tone of voice, o. touch cues and p. zygomatic smiles.

Research reports. 1. Immediacy was first defined as the "directness" and "intensity" of social action by Albert Mehrabian in 1967i. 2. Immediacy promotes psychological closeness (Anderson 1979). 3. "In short, immediacy behaviors express approach or avoidance and, in the process, affect the level of sensory involvement of the participants" (Burgoon et al. 1989, p. 100). 4. "Immediacy is the degree of perceived physical or psychological closeness between people" (Richmond et al. 1991, p. 205).

PUPIL SIZE

Emotion cue. The round, dark pupil in the middle of our eye may vary in size from ca. two-to-eight mm depending on light level. As light goes up, pupils reflexively constrict; as light dims, pupils reflexively dilate. In the 1960s Eckhard Hess (1916-1986), a German-born American psychologist, discovered that pupil size also responds to emotions (see EMOTION).

Usage. Regarding emotion, pupil size may be used to gauge psychological arousal. Anger, excitement and fear, e.g., may cause pupils to enlarge. Hess noted that pupils dilated when presented with attractive stimuli and shrank with unattractive or disliked stimuli. Moreover, Hess found that people with enlarged pupils were judged more attractive than those with smaller ones (see LOVE SIGNALS II, Responsive pupils).

Innateness. The psychosensory pupil response (PPR) is considered to be an innate or reflexive behavior.

Neuro-notes. Pupil dilator and constrictor muscles of the iris are mediated by the oculomotor nerve (Cranial III), which has both a sensory (i.e., general sensory efferent) and a visceral (general visceral efferent) component. Both are smooth muscles that respond to autonomic control (see FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT, REST-AND-DIGEST).

Rest-and-digest nerve fibers activate the pupillary sphincter muscles of the irises to constrict the pupils. Fight-or-flight nerve fibers from the superior cervical ganglion activate dilator muscles to expand the diameter of the pupils. The latter muscles link to the brain's emotional hypothalamus (see HYPOTHALAMUS).

See also EYE-ROLLING.

References:

Burgoon, Judee K., David B. Buller, and W. Gill Woodall (1989). Nonverbal Communication: The Unspoken Dialogue (New York: Harper & Row).

Richmond et al. 1991, p. 205Richmond, Virginia P., James C. McCroskey and Steven K. Payne (1991). Nonverbal Behavior in Interpersonal Relations (2nd Ed., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall).

YouTube Video: See how the entire human body expresses emotions.

ANTITHESIS

Darwinian second principle. The idea, proposed by Charles Darwin (1872), that opposite emotions such as certainty and uncertainty evoke precisely opposite bodily responses.

Usage. Darwin used this "principle" to account for the meaning of nonverbal signs such as, e.g., the shoulder-shrug (see SHOULDER-SHRUG DISPLAY). As an emotional sign of uncertainty, lifted shoulders contrast with squared-shoulder (see BROADSIDE DISPLAY) postures that convey mental states of certitude.

"Useless" behaviors. Darwin's antithesis principle was a creative yet flawed hypothesis. "Certain states of the mind lead . . . to certain habitual movements which were primarily, or may still be, of service," he wrote, "and we shall find that when a directly opposite state of mind is induced, there is a strong and involuntary tendency to the performance of movements of a directly opposite nature, though these have never been of any service" (Darwin 1872, p. 55).

Shrug. Regarding the shrug, Darwin did not explain why lifted shoulders--rather than, say, palm-down hands--should signal uncertainty. By casting shoulder-shrugs as functionally "useless" (i.e., of no "service"; see above, "Useless" behaviors), he was left to suggest that they were inherited as acquired characteristics, a curiously un-evolutionary point of view.

See also ACTIONS, ASSOCIATED HABITS, CERTAINTY.

Reference:

Darwin, Charles (1872). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, third edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).