Newly-published research is shedding new light on how socially anxious or traumatised people may perceive other people's facial expressions and emotions.
University of Otago psychologist Associate Professor Jamin Halberstadt, who was a co-author in the study, said people may think their facial expressions are an unambiguous way of communicating their feelings, but others may, in fact, interpret them in different ways.
And what people believe about another person's emotions has a noticeable effect on what they perceive when they look at that person, the study said.
"Once we interpret an ambiguous or neutral look as angry or happy, we later remember and actually see it [that ambiguous expression] as such, " Prof Halberstadt said.
The study, which is published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, was based on research conducted by an international team of psychologists, including Prof Halberstadt.
The implications of the results go beyond everyday interpersonal misunder- standings, especially for those who have persistent or dysfunctional ways of understanding emotions, such as socially anxious or traumatised people.
The socially anxious have negative interpretations of people's reactions that may permanently colour their perceptions of others' feelings and intentions, perpetuating their mistaken beliefs, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, he said.
People who were socially anxious or in any other dysfunctional state were "probably seeing things in a different way," Prof Halberstadt said.
Participants in the study were each shown a picture of a person with an ambiguous facial expression, and were advised that the person was either angry or happy.
They were then shown a video of that person's expression changing from happy to angry, and asked to find the original picture they had been presented with.
Initial interpretations of the faces affected memories - those who had interpreted the face as angry remembered it as expressing more anger than those who first interpreted it as happy.
Sensors attached to the participants' faces revealed that they tended to mimic the facial expressions they interpreted in the photographs.
"Everyone saw these same ambiguous faces and their mimicry was sort of a signal of how they individually were perceiving them.
"There's this nexus between the body and the mind in perception," he said.
- With NZPA
