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Remote work is surprisingly productive — leading many people to wonder if they’ll ever go back to the office. But why is it so exhausting? Dr. Niedenthal explains why video chat makes it harder to achieve “synchrony,” a sort of unconscious, balletic call-and-response that emerges when two people are in the same room.
Wearing a mask all the time affects how we interact with each other. But how? Dr. Niedenthal explains how masks provide new ways to misunderstand each other, and how humans may adapt at new ways of communicating.
Zoom (or Houseparty or Skype) have replaced hours of in-person encounters. But why do they make you feel so awkward and unfulfilled? Psychologists, computer scientists and neuroscientists say the distortions and delays inherent in video communication can end up making you feel isolated, anxious and disconnected (or more than you were already). You might be better off just talking on the phone.
From grad student Ethan Harrod, a behind the scenes view of how a gap in the literature led to a multi-disciplinary journey, and his first contribution to academia, and the acquisition of more monkey facts than he could have ever hoped to know. Ecology & Evolution
Experts say mirroring another person’s facial expressions is essential not only for recognizing emotion, but also for feeling it. Botox and other cosmetic procedures that alter your face can also flatten your affect and ultimately disrupt your ability to emote, a cause for concern, says Dr. Niedenthal.
“Smile while your heart is breaking, put on a happy face, say cheese. We’re so used to smiling on demand that to do otherwise can seem antisocial. Even going through the motions of a smile, scientists have found, can make us feel happy.” The Wall Street Journal interviewed our own Jared Martin, the first author of a recent paper demonstrating the distinct effects of smiles of reward, affiliation, and dominance on recipients' stress levels. Read the article (behind a paywall) here or email us to request a pdf copy.
When people are being evaluated, their whole body responds. Verbal feedback causes robust activation in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. What about nonverbal evaluative feedback? Recent discoveries about the social functions of facial expression have documented three morphologically distinct smiles, which serve the functions of reinforcement, social smoothing, and social challenge. Jared Martin is the first author on the latest paper from our lab, published in Nature Scientific Reports.
Americans tend to smile more often than people in other countries. It turns out, American smiles signal excitement, confidence, and also have to do with a long history of immigration. The Atlantic features our recent work on historical heterogeneity and reasons for smiling (Rychlowska et al., 2015) is this fun science video on cultural differences in smiling.
Dr. Niedenthal made an appearance on Wisconsin News 3 to talk about our social functional approach to smiles and why smiles are worth studying.
Psychology Today features our research work on historical heterogeneity and cultures of emotion (Niedenthal et al., 2019).