This article was placed in the top 26 globally in the New York Times STEM Writing Competition, a Learning Network contest that received over 3,000 entries.
The eyes are the windows to the soul. As we mask up and socially distance from our fellow community members, the way we communicate has greatly changed. You can no longer see that smile on your friend’s face that assures you that they are being sarcastic in a humorous way, and you can no longer see someone biting their lip in worry. However, one thing that has not changed is the eyes – a powerful way that we express our emotions.
The part of the brain that helps us read faces and interpret emotions of others is called the “fusiform face area”, which is located in the fusiform gyrus, a part of our brain’s occipital lobe. These parts of the brain communicate with the “amygdala”, a part of our brain used for understanding what we see and what we remember. All of these parts of the brain work together and form the system that our brain uses to recognize emotions portrayed on a face.
We humans tend to be able to use the eyebrows and the eyes to recognize the emotions being portrayed. For example, when someone narrows their eyes and glares at you, and their eyebrows bunch up when you are mid-sentence, we recognize that as a sign that they found something that you said offensive.
A study by Adam Anderson (a professor from Cornell University) and Daniel H. Lee (a professor from the University of Colorado, Boulder) shows that participants in a study were able to find out what people were feeling from just their eyes when shown photos.
Going back to Darwin and the theories of evolution, the researchers found that many of these expressions and emotions were not originally used as a means of communication with others, but from our instincts and how we reacted to things that happened around us. For example, when we are shocked or fearful in response to a sudden sound, our eyes widen in shock. Our instincts cause us to do this as a way to look for more signals in our environment as to what the cause of the sound is. On the other hand, we narrow our eyes to block out light when disgusted by something.
With time, however, we have learned to recognize these emotions, and that is how they became a part of our communication. You may notice that often it is almost automatic that you understand what the other person is feeling from their eyes.
Though the way we communicate has changed with the new safety protocols implemented, we can still find ways to see signals and recognize facial expressions, as a primary way that we recognize emotions is with eyes and our emotional recognition system in our brain. Better communication is within reach – we just have to take the time to look for these signals.
Author’s Statement:
When my school began doing both in-person and virtual learning, the students and teachers participating in on-campus instruction wore masks/face coverings and got on the video conferences. I started to notice how I was looking for emotional signals not only in their tone of voice, but also in their facial signals.
I have always had a fascination for how we humans can complete tasks that seem simple (but in reality, has a rather complex process) in seconds, unconsciously – one of these being our ability to sense things in our environment. We do this largely with the help of our eyes, but I also began to wonder how much we put out these signals with our eyes, and that is where the idea for this research came from.
Works Cited:
Science Daily, April 17th, 2017, “Eye expressions offer a glimpse into the evolution of emotion”, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170417182822
Pogosyan, Marianna and Engelmann, Jan Benjamin; April 24th, 2017; “How We Read Emotions from Faces” https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2017.00011
Thomas, Brian; May 11th, 2017; “Why Eyes Express Emotion” https://www.icr.org/article/why-eyes-express-emotion
“How Eyes Express Emotion”; Rochester Eye Associates; https://www.rochestereyeassociates.com/article.cfm?ArticleNumber=196
March 31st, 2014; Loudoun Eye Associates; “How Your Eyes Convey Emotion”;
https://www.loudouneyeassociates.com/how-your-eyes-convey-emotion/
August 31st, 2020; New York Times, Preston, Elizabeth; “In an Era of Face Masks, We’re All a Little More Face Blind”; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/health/covid-masks-face-blindness.html