Want to know how someone in your life is really feeling?
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Instead of looking to their facial expressions and body language for insight into how they’re feeling emotionally, you should just listen.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
A new study from the American Psychological Association suggests that listening is much more important to understanding how a person is feeling than following their outward actions. In fact, we as humans often misinterpret or inaccurately perceive peoples’ emotions by relying on visual cues.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
The study’s researchers examined more than 1,800 people and asked some of their subjects to listen to each other – without looking at all – in order to draw their conclusions. The study showed that people were more able to more accurately interpret the emotions of their fellow subjects if they listened and didn’t focus on facial expressions.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Study author Michael Kraus, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale University, said:
I think when examining these findings relative to how psychologists have studied emotion, these results might be surprising. Many tests of emotional intelligence rely on accurate perceptions of faces. What we find here is that perhaps people are paying too much attention to the face — the voice might have much of the content necessary to perceive others’ internal states accurately. The findings suggest that we should be focusing more on studying vocalizations of emotion.
Facial expressions definitely help, but this study gives us new tools for how to relate to, and potentially help, our friends, family, and colleagues who need someone to rely on.
(h/t: Live Science)
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