Sunday, June 6, 2010

Facial Expressions Reveal and also Help the Brain Understand Emotional Signals

So what happens if you undergo botox treatment?

Here's an excerpt from a recent study:

In the new study, Botox-induced paralysis slowed down participants' response to angry and sad sentences by about a tenth of a second, on average. But such effects can snowball when communicating with others. "Language is highly interactive, and we're very, very sensitive to all kinds of cues that happen on the order of milliseconds," says Arizona State University psychologist Arthur Glenberg, one of the study's authors.

Timing is crucial, for example, in the ritual of taking turns during conversation. Let's say that, in a marital disagreement, your spouse is repeatedly just a tenth of a second too slow in responding, leaving the mounting impression of disinterest or failure to comprehend. If such delays were chronic, Glenberg says, "That's enough time for a person to get really (ticked) off."

Read the entire article here.

No comments:

Post a Comment