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Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

Book by Frans de Waal · 2 quotes · Emotions, Humanos, Evolucion

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Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves Quotes

“Reprimanded children sometimes can’t stop smiling, which risks being mistaken for disrespect. All they’re doing, though, is nervously signaling nonhostility. This is why women smile more than men, and why men who smile are often in need of friendly relations. One study explicitly looked at this underdog quality of the smile in pictures taken right before matches in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The photographs show both fighters defiantly staring at each other. Analysis of a large number of pictures revealed that the fighter with the more intense smile was the one who’d end up losing the fight later that day. The investigators concluded that smiling indicates a lack of physical dominance, and that the fighter who smiles the most is the one most in need of appeasement.”

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“I seriously doubt that the smile is our species’s “happy” face, as is often stated in books about human emotions. Its background is much richer, with meanings other than cheeriness. Depending on the circumstances, the smile can convey nervousness, a need to please, reassurance to anxious others, a welcoming attitude, submission, amusement, attraction, and so on. Are all these feelings captured by calling them “happy”? Our labels grossly simplify emotional displays, like the way we give each emoticon a single meaning. Many of us now use smiley or frowny faces to punctuate text messages, which suggests that language by itself is not as effective as advertised. We feel the need to add nonverbal cues to prevent a peace offer from being mistaken for an act of revenge, or a joke from being taken as an insult. Emoticons and words are poor substitutes for the body itself, though: through gaze direction, expressions, tone of voice, posture, pupil dilation, and gestures, the body is much better than language at communicating a wide range of meanings.”

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Book:Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves
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