By Marlene Cimons, The Washington Post
We use our faces to communicate, but our facial expressions may not always come across the way we think they do. And we may be just as wrong when reading the faces of others, a study says.
“Many people think they know what other people’s faces should look like when they are happy, sad, angry or afraid,” said Nicola Binetti, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, and a co-author of the study. “We found this is not always the case.”
People don’t always understand when faces intend to convey feelings such as happiness, anger, fear or sadness. Different facial expressions may mean different things to different people. “What one person sees as anger, for example, another might see as fear or sadness,” Binetti said.