Fear and Rage
I'm not sure what is easier for most people to read-- words or faces.
If our general ability to follow the programming directions from the VCR instruction booklet is any indication, I think faces. If you saw the the facial acrobatics of last week's presidential debates, again I think faces would be your likely answer.
One of the most memorable things about my five-year-old trips into the Boston Museum of Science was not just the room with the mega-hella big Van de Graaf generator that throws blue bolts of electricity that crash into the oversized metal bird cage the exhibit guide sits in. No, the lightning bolt machine was cool, but in the room NEXT to that had something equally intriguing: a psychology exhibit.
All along this one exhibition wall hung a series of white masks of human faces, each contorted into a different expression: happy, sad, worried, frightened, angry, soothed, and ecetera, ecetera so. It was about the deep-seated and universal ability we apparently have to interpret different facial gestures of fellow humans as conveying specific emotions, from infancy on. Of course there are cultural differences and subtleties too, and they can cause trouble (as this author reports from once critically misreading a grimace as a grin).
And what of our ability to read it in other creatures?
The other day walking down the street I saw a fairly standard "Beware of Dog/ Stay the Hell Out" sign on someone's yard fence with a picture of a mean, snarling dog on it:
But wait, I thought, am I reading this right?
The sign reminded me of a facial gesture chart I'd seen by the great animal behaviorist, Nikolaas Tinbergen, supposedly illustrating the emotions underlying the facial expressions of dogs...
: : : Back home looking at the figure it seemed to me that according to Tinbergen the dog on the "Warning" sign was showing more "Fear" than "Rage," or really a fair mixture of both (circled):
...
Is it that most of us are too unawares and ignorant to know the difference? Would a "Dog Whisperer" simply look at the "Warning" sign and think they need to enter the yard and talk with this clearly anxious and frightened puppy?
Perhaps the thing is really that one should be just as scared of an animal that is fearful as much as one that is raging; as rage is the fist of a body in fear >>
>> If the current global politics and its various manifestations tell us anything, it would seem this much is certainly and tragically so...
If our general ability to follow the programming directions from the VCR instruction booklet is any indication, I think faces. If you saw the the facial acrobatics of last week's presidential debates, again I think faces would be your likely answer.
One of the most memorable things about my five-year-old trips into the Boston Museum of Science was not just the room with the mega-hella big Van de Graaf generator that throws blue bolts of electricity that crash into the oversized metal bird cage the exhibit guide sits in. No, the lightning bolt machine was cool, but in the room NEXT to that had something equally intriguing: a psychology exhibit.
All along this one exhibition wall hung a series of white masks of human faces, each contorted into a different expression: happy, sad, worried, frightened, angry, soothed, and ecetera, ecetera so. It was about the deep-seated and universal ability we apparently have to interpret different facial gestures of fellow humans as conveying specific emotions, from infancy on. Of course there are cultural differences and subtleties too, and they can cause trouble (as this author reports from once critically misreading a grimace as a grin).
And what of our ability to read it in other creatures?
The other day walking down the street I saw a fairly standard "Beware of Dog/ Stay the Hell Out" sign on someone's yard fence with a picture of a mean, snarling dog on it:
But wait, I thought, am I reading this right?
The sign reminded me of a facial gesture chart I'd seen by the great animal behaviorist, Nikolaas Tinbergen, supposedly illustrating the emotions underlying the facial expressions of dogs...
: : : Back home looking at the figure it seemed to me that according to Tinbergen the dog on the "Warning" sign was showing more "Fear" than "Rage," or really a fair mixture of both (circled):
...
Is it that most of us are too unawares and ignorant to know the difference? Would a "Dog Whisperer" simply look at the "Warning" sign and think they need to enter the yard and talk with this clearly anxious and frightened puppy?
Perhaps the thing is really that one should be just as scared of an animal that is fearful as much as one that is raging; as rage is the fist of a body in fear >>
>> If the current global politics and its various manifestations tell us anything, it would seem this much is certainly and tragically so...
posted by andrew s.yang at Wednesday, October 06, 2004
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