Emotional Contagion

Have you ever experienced suddenly feeling more lively and energetic around someone? Or, on the contrary, feeling depressed and anxious, even though that person hasn’t said anything to cause that particular emotion?

In this case, it’s very likely you were affected by emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is the process through which we are unconsciously affected by the emotions of those around us. We have the ability to “pick up” the emotions surrounding us, allowing ourselves to be influenced by them, whether they are positive or negative. Read more

Facial expressions of emotion

Faces identify us as unique beings. The interest for researching the face and finding out what we can say by just observing it, was present since ancient times. Yet, an extensive research of facial expressions was made by the psychologist Paul Ekman in the 70’. He catalogued all the human facial expressions, using a numbering system for each group of muscles involved in producing a facial expression. He found that certain emotions are always accompanied with certain facial expressions. Read more