Wednesday, October 02, 2002

Gladwell articles

I just came across a site (via Arts & Letters Daily) that archives Malcolm Gladwell's articles from The New Yorker (and other publications). I've been carrying around the August 5 issue because I wanted to comment on Gladwell's article, "The Naked Face: Can you read people's thoughts just by looking at them?"

What intrigued me, besides the people who are very skilled at picking up give-away clues from the subtlest facial expressions, is that certain physical expressions produce certain emotional effects—and not just the other way around. Two researchers, Paul Ekman and J. J. Newberry, sat across a table and "made faces" at each other in order to catalogue all possible facial expressions. They realized after making sad and angry expressions at each other all day, they truly felt sad and angry.

No comments: