--Original published at Ashley's Psyche

Interpreting facial expressions is a lot harder than I expected. I thought that I was fairly decent at being able to interpret other’s emotions from their facial expressions, but after completing the emotional intelligence quiz from UC Berkley, I am unsure. I ended up getting a score of 15 out of 20 when I took the quiz, which is not a terrible score, but I expected to only get one or two wrong when completing it, not five.

The reason I believe that I got more questions wrong than I thought I would is because I found the more negative emotions, such as embarrassment, pain, and fear more difficult to distinguish between than some of the more positive emotions, such as happiness, love, and desire. It seemed more difficult for me to distinguish between all of the negative emotions as I feel like most them are expressed in similar situations. For example, one of the very first faces I identified wrong was fear. I had said that the face the person was making was embarrassment, as it seemed like the taunt mouth and big eyes were expressing a type of awkwardness I would feel if I was embarrassed. In this situation, I related the facial expression to one that I would make; however, I neglected to realize that I personally connect fear and embarrassment on a deeper level. I fear being in embarrassing situations, so it makes sense as to why I would make a face that expresses fear when I am really trying to express embarrassment. As for the more positive emotions, I do not connect them as deeply to each other, as I do not see happiness, flirtatiousness, and desire as the same type of facial expressions.

Although I did fail to predict how many questions I would get right on the quiz, I do feel as though it is somewhat reliable. The Science Center at UC Berkeley is a fairly credible source and each of the pictures is backed with a scientific explanation as to why the correct answer is correct.

I also found the emotional intelligence quiz to be fairly affective in teaching me some information I can use in daily life. Now that I know certain muscle tendencies for each type of emotion, I will be able to more clearly identify these emotions while having face-to-face discussions with people in real life. If I am able to more clearly understand the emotions of the people I am talking to, I will be able to communicate more clearly with them and have more control over social situations. I am glad that I took the quiz!

--Original published at BillardnBlog

I feel as though I am decent at being able to pick out facial expressions and emotions of people. Although, I did not do as well as I thought I would on the emotional intelligence test. My score was only a 14/20. I believe that telling emotions through body language is easier than the multiple choice test with only pictures of faces. Telling emotions can be shown through more than just someones face, their body language is a major signal as to how someone is feeling.

Some emotions are easier to read than others. Happiness, anger, and sadness are common and easy to tell through someone’s facial expression and the pictures on the test. Other, more specific emotions such as contempt and embarrassment were harder to pick out just from a facial image. Embarrassment I got confused with amusement because the the person seemed to have a smile, but just not showing teeth. The tell sign in the image was the downward tilted head.

The website that I took the test on recommended that the best way to get better at telling people’s emotions is practice. From my first impression post this was one of my goals in this psychology class. I hope this section will help me learn the signals that relate to specific emotions. I could use this in my daily life to help with any kind of relationships I have. Having a better skill at telling people’s emotions will help me form better conversations with them or help me react in certain situations. Being able to know if someone is sad or angry I’ll be able to know how to respond to that person and help comfort them as needed.

--Original published at Casey's Blog Site

On the emotion test I had scored only a 10/20, and was rather displeased with this. Reason being is because usually when it comes to people around me I can figure out or get close to how a person feels. I certainly did not think I would miss as many as I did. But then I thought about the people around me, how long I have known them and how close I am to them. Figured this has some effect on how good I am at figuring out a person’s expression. In doing so since I have known a person longer or am closer to a person the better I am at telling their expression rather than just looking at a picture of someone I have never even met. This makes sense to me because when it comes to friends, family members anyone close to you, you want to make sure they are happy so you tend to pick up these signals/expressions that indicate they are not happy or they are hurting or whatever negative emotion you can think of. So looking back to the test it is clear why some expressions were confusing, for instance when love was shown, the other choices that were listed with it were compassion, flirtatiousness and comfortable. Now to me these choices are all some what similar in that when a person is in love they show compassion to their partner, they flirt with their partner and they are comfortable around/with their partner. So to me the answer wasn’t too clear when I thought about all of these things together. So in conclusion a person may not be as good as reading expressions of others that aren’t close to them rather than those who are.

--Original published at Kevin Psych Blog

I scored a 13/20 on the emotional intelligence quiz. I don’t think this represents what I had expected to score, I definitely didn’t expect to miss as many as I did. I thought I would probably only miss one or two because, how hard can it be? It was fairly difficult at times, sometimes it had to do with the subtlety of the difference faces being made but other times it seemed like it had more to do with how overly exaggerated some of the expressions being made were. For example, their example of an angry face looked a lot like pain to me, with how the person bit down on their lips. It didn’t look like any angry person I have ever seen, it looked more like someone who just got hurt and was trying to hold in a scream. So as far as credibility in my scoring, I’m not sure I trust it entirely. If they had used faces of, perhaps, famous people from moments captured on T.V. as realistic examples I think it would have been more credible. The information given after answering did seem reasonable and useful. For me the easiest faces to read were the fear and happiness ones and the hardest was anger, as it seemed like a lot of other emotions create similar expressions. I think the applications of this knowledge in real life are pretty obvious, to use the information to try and see what people are really thinking. It would be useful to know how honest someone is being by using small facial cues.

--Original published at Site Title

For this post, I took the Emotion Intelligence test. I scored 12/20 on the test. This score is apparently average. My score does not reflect the amount of expressions I believe I am able to read. The test is not an accurate measurement of emotion deciphering abilities.

The expressions depicted in the pictures within the test are vague and could be viewed several different emotions. Despite the descriptions of muscle movement caused by each emotion, differences in facial expressions are somewhat indecipherable. The descriptions do not match the listed emotions in many of the pictures. Happiness, amusement, embarrassment, shame, and love are examples of confusing expressions depicted in the test.

The ability to read emotions accurately is an integral part of daily life. Maintaining relationships requires communication, and understanding the feelings of others allows communication to flourish. Reading emotions also can be beneficial in judging certain situations.

--Original published at Caitlin's corner

For this first impression post, I chose the second option. I had to take a multiple choice 20 question facial expression quiz. I scored 17/20 on the quiz, it was a little harder than I thought it would be. At first, I didn’t realize how similar some emotions can be and how to differentiate them. There are very subtle facial and physical cues that can totally change the meaning or emotion. I never realized how heavily we rely on social cues in conversation also. I don’t know how accurate this test is, since, in my opinion, some of these emotions can be almost interchangeable or easily confused. I thought some of the terms were synonyms, but the meaning can totally change depending on the term apparently. Also, this quiz appeared in an online magazine website for healthy living and such based on science. I know there is a science behind recognizing facial expressions, emotions, and social cues, so this seems fairly accurate. I thought I would be better at this, but 17/20 isn’t too bad either for going into it without any practice or priming. For me, the hardest emotions to differentiate were the embarrassment and shame ones, and the contempt/anger ones. The differences didn’t seem that big to me or I didn’t realize the small details like wrinkles. I can use this information to help me in social interactions all the time. If I’m with a new group of people, I can tell what people are thinking or feeling, and potentially make friends. You can avoid awkward situations if you can feel out how people are feeling or what they’re thinking. You can also help someone if you see someone having a hard time expressing an emotion, they can physically, but not verbally maybe. Overall, it can help in many social situations for me.

--Original published at Lynsey Wissler's Blog

Lynsey Wissler

Emotion Test

When I took this test I did fairly well. I received a 19/20 when trying to examine the emotions just by their facial expressions. This has been a skill that I have had since I was younger. I am generally very good at being able to tell how people are feeling just from watching them.

There were two emotions that I felt were very hard to tell apart from this test. Embarrassment and Shame I think can be hard to tell the difference between, especially due to the fact that often times the two go hand in hand in a situation. because they are so similar the facial expressions that are associated with them can be similar. When considering emotions that were easy to tell apart I think positive vs. negative emotions were easily distinguishable. For example, when someone was smiling it was easy to tell that they were not angry. However, it was difficult to tell if they were smiling because of happiness or love.

I think that this test is somewhat credible. I think that the pictures definitely display the emotions that they are representing in the test, however, I think that they are over exaggerated which makes it easier to determine the emotion. This could potentially be a problem because often I think when people are experiencing one of the listed emotions they are not as obvious about it as this test makes it seem.

For me, I can use this information in my future very effectively. As an education major, much of my job is reading people and deciphering what is the best approach to help them learn the information in the best possible way. Being able to distinguish emotions can help my future as a teacher develope while learning how to work with children and their emotions. Overall, this test was very beneficial and interesting when deciphering emotions and how I myself can interpret them.

--Original published at Em

Dan Gilbert suggests that the pre-frontal cortex is the justification for the advancements of the human mind. This is because humans can simulate situations. The impact bias suggests that different impacts are less severe or have less impact then they do. The fact that astonished me was that i it happened more that 3 months ago than it has no impact. Humans synthesize happiness. Synthesized happiness is what we get when we do not get what we wanted Natural happiness what we get when we get what we wanted. People do not know they synthesize happiness and this “can be a supreme disadvantage”. The irreversible term is not conducive to the synthesis of happiness. This is because happiness does not work when the student is killing themselves over the choice instead of just being content with what they have.  If someone is always worrying about their own mistakes then they are not content. They cannot learn. Gilbert claims we can manufacture happiness if we simply allow ourselves to be.

I believe this is very true. This perspective is very true. I always stress so much. I stress over things for example in chemistry if I do not have exactly the grade I want I am not happy. Where Gilbert is correct if I am trying my best this is not the end of the world. IN the long term being grateful for all the things you do have is much more important than focusing on the one thing you do not.