Context and personality key in understanding responses to emotional facial expressions
Wednesday, August 6, 2008 - 03:35
in Psychology & Sociology
It is well appreciated that facial expressions play a major role in non-verbal social communication among humans and other primates, because faces provide rapid access to information about the identity as well as the internal states and intentions of others. In his song, Mona Lisa, Nat King Cole reflected on the motivations for Mona Lisa's "mystic smile" and new data by scientists in Switzerland suggests that both the social context of a person's facial expression and certain facets of the viewer's personality could affect how our brain interprets the social meaning of someone else's smile or frown.