Is it easier to guess a person’s mood by looking at the expression on their face or on their body? Although it seems that faces convey emotions better, the truth is thatthe body expresses itself much more reliably, as revealed by a study published in the journalScience.
The authors, from Princeton University, showed a group of volunteers a series of photographs in which they had to evaluate the intensity of the emotions of professional tennis players when winning or losing points in a match. First they were shown the face, then the body, and finally the complete image of the athlete. “To our surprise,” the authors explain, “when the volunteers saw only the faces of the players they could not distinguish the expressionwinners versus losers. ”However, they were able to do it by looking at the body or the full photograph of the body and face.
In a second experiment, the scientists used photo retouching to combine the faces of losers with the bodies of winners, and vice versa. In this case,participants identified positive or negative expression based on the body, and not the face. To explain these surprising results, the researchers argue that “it is possible that the facial muscles are not the most suitable for displaying intense expression.” In addition, they believe that when the emotions are very strong a distortion similar to that which occurs when a speaker is at full volume can occur: “the quality of the signal degrades and becomes noisy,” they explain.
