Actor James Franco looks sort of happy as he records a video diary in the movie “127 Hours.” It’s not until the camera zooms out, revealing his arm is crushed under a boulder, that it becomes clear his goofy smile belies his agony.
Actor James Franco looks sort of happy as he records a video diary in the movie “127 Hours.” It’s not until the camera zooms out, revealing his arm is crushed under a boulder, that it becomes clear his goofy smile belies his agony.
That’s because when it comes to reading a person’s state of mind, visual context — as in background and action — is just as important as facial expressions and body language, according to a new study from UC Berkeley.
The findings, to appear online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge decades of research positing that emotional intelligence and recognition are based largely on the ability to read micro-expressions signaling happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt and other positive and negative moods and sentiments.
“Our study reveals that emotion recognition is, at its heart, an issue of context as much as it is about faces,” said study lead author Zhimin Chen, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Berkeley.
Read more at University of California - Berkeley
Image: People can read emotions, even when they can't see facial expressions, by studying the context.
