Institute of Nonverbal Communication

23/02/2022

What is Sadness?
Sadness is one of the seven universal emotions experienced by everyone around the world resulting from the loss of someone or something important. What causes us sadness varies greatly based on personal and cultural notions of loss. While sadness is often considered a “negative” emotion, it serves an important role in signaling a need to receive help or comfort.

What does it mean to feel sadness? Dr. Paul Ekman explains what the sadness emotion is, why we feel sad, and how facial expressions reveal sadness.

18/02/2022

Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy enable psychopaths to be highly manipulative. Nevertheless, psychopathy is among the most difficult disorders to spot.

Psychopaths can appear normal, even charming. Underneath, they lack any semblance of conscience. Their antisocial nature inclines them often (but by no means always) to criminality.

Psychopaths spark popular fascination and clinical anguish: Adult psychopathy is largely resistant to treatment, though programs exist to treat callous, unemotional youth in hopes of preventing them from maturing into psychopaths.

More about psychopathy: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychopathy

15/02/2022

We touch, caress, stroke, scratch, rub, pull, pluck, indent, press, squeeze, and do many other things to our own faces. No other area of the body gets this much varied attention on any given day. Consider the lips alone: We lick them, compress them, caress them with pencils or fingers, tap them, pull on them, or even make nonsensical vibrating noises with them, and, yes kiss with them. We do these things all for the sake of attending to our brain’s need to remain calm and in a healthy state of equilibrium, or to enhance a moment (romantic or otherwise). Once we outgrow the thumb-sucking stage as toddlers, the face is our go-to medium for pacifying.

When and how we touch our faces can reveal much about our emotional state.

10/02/2022

🤔Do Narcissists Have Memory Problems or Are They Just Liars?

👉If you are in a relationship with someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder, you may start to wonder if your narcissistic mate has memory problems. Your mate makes promises to you and then claims to have never said anything remotely like what you know you heard. Or, after a lot of negotiating the two of you reach some agreement about where to go for dinner, and then you find out your mate made a reservation at a different restaurant that you told him you hate. When you complain, your mate says: “You should have been clearer. I never heard you say that you preferred the other one.”

👉After a few of these experiences, you are likely to become concerned. Is your mate a liar? Is he or she just ignoring everything you say because your opinion does not count? Or, does your mate have some form of early dementia that is interfering with his or her memory?

There is a logical explanation why narcissists twist the truth.

07/02/2022

There are a number of ways in which cultures do differ in their emotional expressions. Cultures differ also in some of the specific events which are likely to call forth an emotion. For example, some foods are considered a delicacy in one culture but evoke feelings of disgust in another culture, not to mention that there are differences found even within a specific culture.

Explore the cultural differences in emotional expression through the lens of Darwin's studies and Ekman's research on emotional expressions.

02/02/2022

🔎A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that the older an adult thinks a Black child is, the more likely the adult is to incorrectly view the child as being angry. There was no similar shift in adults’ perceptions of white children’s emotions.

🤔“Our earlier work had established that racialized anger bias is imposed on both Black adults and Black children,” says Amy Halberstadt, co-author of a paper on the work and a professor of psychology at NC State.

🔎“This study shows again that Black children are more likely than white children to be seen as angry, even when they are not angry, which has ramifications for receiving unfair consequences.”

The older an adult believes a Black child to be, the more likely they are to believe the child is exhibiting angry emotions, even when they are not. The same emotional perception shift does not occur when an adult sees an image of a white child.

26/01/2022

Autistic people’s ability to accurately identify facial expressions is affected by the speed at which the expression is produced and its intensity, according to new research at the University of Birmingham.

In particular, autistic people tend to be less able to accurately identify anger from facial expressions produced at a normal ‘real world’ speed. The researchers also found that for people with a related disorder, alexithymia, all expressions appeared more intensely emotional.

People on the autism spectrum have difficulties in identifying angry expressions produced at normal speed and intensity.

19/01/2022

Patients who received botox injections at four different sites, not just the forehead, reported anxiety significantly less than those undergoing different treatments for the same conditions.

Patients who received botox injections at four different sites, not just the forehead, reported anxiety significantly less than those undergoing different treatments for the same conditions.

13/01/2022

🤔Are you uncertain of the distinctions between a sociopath and a psychopath? If so, you are not alone.

👉Many psychiatrists, forensic psychologists, criminologists, and police officers incorrectly use the terms sociopath and psychopath interchangeably. Leading experts also disagree on the meaningful differences between the two conditions — and those who agree that there are differences often disagree on what those differences are. I contend that there are clear and significant distinctions.

There are vital differences between them.

10/01/2022

Are you worried, tired, frustrated, angry, or anxious? You don’t need to tell the person on the other side of the virtual meeting—they can see it almost instantly.

There are certainly times when it’s okay to reveal your true feelings, especially with family or friends. But in a professional virtual meeting or a remote job interview, you might want to show yourself at your best.

The thoughts you dwell on the most are the stories you put out to the world.

04/01/2022

Narcissism is defined as “entitled self-importance.” The term narcissism comes from the mythical Greek character Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image reflected in still water. Aggression is defined as any behavior intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed, whereas violence is defined as aggression that involves extreme physical harm such as injury or death.

Our review found that individuals high in narcissism are especially aggressive when provoked, but are also aggressive when they aren’t provoked. Study participants with high levels of narcissism showed high levels of physical aggression, verbal aggression, spreading gossip, bullying others and even displacing aggression against innocent bystanders. They attacked in both a hotheaded and coldblooded manner. Narcissism was related to aggression in males and females of all ages from both Western and Eastern countries.

Participants with high levels of narcissism showed high levels of aggression, spreading gossip, bullying others, and more.

30/12/2021

Men who are intoxicated with alcohol have impairments when it comes to correctly assessing emotional facial cues in others. Researchers speculate the findings may explain why alcohol use is often associated with harmful interpersonal and social interactions, such as aggression and domestic violence.

Men who are intoxicated with alcohol have impairments when it comes to correctly assessing emotional facial cues in others. Researchers speculate the findings may explain why alcohol use is often associated with harmful interpersonal and social interactions, such as aggression and domestic violence.