Alcohol can be a good way to test a person’s psychology. Since it diminishes inhibitions (probably by dulling amygdala-activation, and reducing amygdala-mediated inhibition of behavior), it exaggerates a person’s innate psychological drives. Mean people get meaner as their amygdala stops curtailing their meanness, happy people get happier, and so on. There is a disadvantage to trying to judge intoxicated people though.
There is an article here on a photographer who took pictures of his friends sober, after one glass of wine, after two, and after three. It is interesting how introducing an amygdala-relaxant like alcohol removes the subtle signs of stress in facial expressions which I generally use to judge trustworthiness and personality. Those faces actually look different to me than what I would expect if those people were to simply fake smiles.
Intense eyes, grimaces, fearful eyes, angry eyebrows – they all seem to abate with intoxication, as one would expect of amygdala-relaxation. So once alcohol is introduced into an environment, visual examinations of people will not be as effective as deeper judgments about the motivations driving actual actions and statements.
Worth considering while meeting new people in the presence of alcohol.
[…] Don’t Try To Read Faces At A Bar […]
I plan to read Ekman’s book on facial expressions and hope I can improve with experience. Being able to see these subtle signs of stress and facial expression is one of the main things I hope to learn from your blog. I almost saw what you meant with the artist who got naked in Cologne to protest the rape, but it’s still something I’m struggling with.
It comes with age, too. I have read there is believed to be an unknown brain structure that doesn’t come online until you are around 34 to 36, and when it does (if it does, because it may not in everyone), that insight into other’s internal states hits all at once. So by all means practice, but be ready around then for it all to coalesce.
Great post AC, recognizing those subtle signs of stress is still something I’m working on and hope to learn more about. One can’t cover a person’s mouth in real life to examine their eyes, so I guess it’s more about observing a lot of people, just not at parties.
You can train on pictures. First isolate the facial part of interest, and then recreate the facial part in a mirror, and try to feel what somebody with that expression would feel. After learning to feel the emotion in the part, then look at the whole picture, and practice focusing your amygdala until you can look at the whole picture and only see the one part.
I’ve got another post I’m working on coming up on this.
Ack I double-posted because for some reason my browser didn’t show the “Waiting moderation” message, might be because I switched from chrome to firefox.
Looking forward to your next post on it!