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EMOTIONAL BODY LANGUAGE

Emotions may be the most visible non-verbal body language signals. It can also be said that they are probably the truest. They can also be faked, however, so these should really be seen more as indicators instead of absolute guarantees.

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You would do well to take them in context, taking what is being said into account, as well as what is going on around you, together with the body language.

There is also a very wide range of emotions, from anger to happiness and sadness, embarrassment and surprise, to anxiety, fear and nervousness. These are the appearances of emotions.

What are emotions, then, per se?

Intro to Emotions

The book, Discovering Psychology, describes emotions as ‘complex psychological states involving three very distinct components: subjective experiences, psychological responses, and expressive or behavioral responses.’

In an effort to further understand emotions, researchers have attempted to identify and classify them. For example, psychologist Paul Eckman, in 1972, suggested that there were six basic emotions, namely:

• Anger
• Surprise
• Sadness
• Happiness
• Disgust, and
• Fear

In 1999, Eckman expanded this list to include such emotions as:

• Pride
• Shame
• Excitement
• Embarrassment
• Contempt
• Amusement, and
• Satisfaction

There are visible non-verbal cues to these emotions too. The following is a brief discussion of what these are in true emotional behavior!

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 True Emotion Behavior (Internal emotion)

Fear, nervousness and anxiety have many levels. The body’s responses to these make them easy to detect. A pale face, cold sweats, trembling lips, holding your breath, gasping, voice tremors, and ready or defensive body language are just some of these responses.

Anger displays itself in a number of ways. Your face and neck can appear flushed or red, your fists might clench, you can bare your teeth or snarl, and you my display aggressive or power body language.

Embarrassment may cause you to look away from others, or to look down. You may avoid eye contact, grimace, fake a smile, try to cover up your embarrassment by changing the topic, and your face and neck can become flushed and red!

Happiness shows itself by a relaxation of muscles, open body language, and a smile that goes all the way to your eyes. In contrast, sadness is seen by a trembling lip, a drooping of your body, tears, and a flat tone in your speech.

Raised eyebrows, an open mouth, widening eyes and as sudden backward movement are all indicators of surprise.

From these, you can see that true emotional behavior is difficult to fake. Is it possible, though?

 Fake Emotion Behavior (external emotion)

Of course it is!

We see this especially in people who work in the service industry. Waiters, cashiers, flight attendants all fake enthusiasm and excitement from time to time. They need to appear happy at their jobs in order to set the customer at ease, and especially in the case of waiters, on order to secure a decent gratuity.

And since it is not possible for any one person to be perfectly happy, excited and enthusiastic all of the time, it stands to reason then that these emotions and their behaviors or cues are then fabricated or faked.

Another instance where emotional behavior might be faked is at the reading of a loved ones will. You might be excited about a windfall that has been bequeathed to you, but showing this excitement might not be appropriate, given the context. You will have to fake sadness, at least until you are alone, when you can let your true emotions out!

Here are two examples of true and fake emotional behavior.

 Short Examples

True Emotional Behavior:

You are falsely accused by your spouse of cheating. Because you are innocent, you register shock and surprise immediately on your face. Your spouse is adamant that you have strayed, though, and so this angers you. You ask why they have made this accusation, and then, when they tell you, you realize why they could have misunderstood a perfectly innocent situation. Now you feel embarrassed!

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Fake Emotional Behavior:

You are a flight attendant, and you have just worked a hectic shift in Economy. Most of the passengers were very demanding, but you faked a smile, and pretended to be more than happy to fulfill all their needs. Remembering that your grandmother just died, you are sad, and you go to the back of the cabin for a breather. Then you are summoned back to economy, a child travelling alone needing some attention. Despite how you really feel, you fake excitement and enthusiasm, knowing that this is what the child needs you to be.

 Conclusion

Emotions are very powerful social signals. They allow you to respond to your environment by giving you powerful physical messages. Although emotions are felt behaviorally and psychologically, there is also a cognitive aspect. And thanks to evolution, we can adapt these behaviors to suit any context.

The use of emotion has been advocated by evolutionary psychologists for a very long time now. We have, according to these thinking minds, developed a set number of emotional states and responses that are both necessary and useful.

One such emotion is fear!

Say, for example, you fear being ambushed or attacked by yourself at night. The responses to this fear result in the development of solutions to mitigate this risk or problem.

You become more aware, for example. You become highly attentive to your environment, looking for visual and auditory cues. You also notice a shift in your priorities and goals. Hunger, thirst and pain for example, are suppressed in your pursuit of safety.

Your systems of gathering information become focused on particular issues, you start to view concepts as dangerous-safe as opposed to easy-difficult, and you start to remember similar events from your past.

Fear can also paralyze you, or you find yourself communicating unusually, your inference testing system is evoked, and you’re learning systems are activated.

Emotional behavior, whether true or fake, is therefore extremely useful.

References

Kendra Cherry, What Are Emotions and the Types of Emotional Responses, (July 27, 2017)

Adrian Furnham Ph.D., What Are Emotions For, (June 03, 2016)

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