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Calculus is hard
Aug. 12th, 2008 12:09 amA number of years back, I read an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. It's about the ability of some people to read what people are really thinking by the involuntary momentary flashes of emotion that psychologist Paul Ekman calls "microexpressions."
That finding was surprising enough, but here's one that genuinely odd:
"Ekman, Friesen, and another colleague, Robert Levenson, who teaches at Berkeley, published a study of this effect in Science. They monitored the bodily indices of anger, sadness, and fear--heart rate and body temperature--in two groups. The first group was instructed to remember and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other was told to simply produce a series of facial movements, as instructed by Ekman-- to "assume the position," as they say in acting class. The second group, the people who were pretending, showed the same physiological responses as the first. A few years later, a German team of psychologists published a similar study. They had a group of subjects look at cartoons, either while holding a pen between their lips--an action that made it impossible to contract either of the two major smiling muscles, the risorius and the zygomatic major-- or while holding a pen clenched between their teeth, which had the opposite effect and forced them to smile. The people with the pen between their teeth found the cartoons much funnier. Emotion doesn't just go from the inside out. It goes from the outside in. What's more, neither the subjects "assuming the position" nor the people with pens in their teeth knew they were making expressions of emotion. In the facial-feedback system, an expression you do not even know that you have can create an emotion you did not choose to feel." {emphases added}
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, I was at the dentist today. It was my third visit on a Monday in as many weeks, as we've been deep-cleaning my teeth quadrant by quadrant. (The fourth quadrant, due to scheduling, was cleaned weeks ago.)
Here's the thing -- I put two and two together, and I think I know why people go nuts at the dentist.
We're forced to "assume the position" -- in this instance, we're forced to adopt expressions of fear and anger. Lips curled, teeth exposed. And being forced to adopt the expressions of fear, we become fearful.
The real kicker? Given the mechanics of what needs to be done in dentistry, the physical tasks that need to be accomplished... I can't think of any way to get the job done without contorting our faces into those particular expressions.
I think this may be related to why drugs work to calm some people down and not others. Because, drugs or not, the forced facial expressions are always the same.
I try to be a good patient, as always, I really do. But if you're going to induce fear and anger in me, without allowing me any control in the matter... Well, you get what you get.
(Re the title: "Calculus" isn't always a mathematical term.)
That finding was surprising enough, but here's one that genuinely odd:
"Ekman, Friesen, and another colleague, Robert Levenson, who teaches at Berkeley, published a study of this effect in Science. They monitored the bodily indices of anger, sadness, and fear--heart rate and body temperature--in two groups. The first group was instructed to remember and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other was told to simply produce a series of facial movements, as instructed by Ekman-- to "assume the position," as they say in acting class. The second group, the people who were pretending, showed the same physiological responses as the first. A few years later, a German team of psychologists published a similar study. They had a group of subjects look at cartoons, either while holding a pen between their lips--an action that made it impossible to contract either of the two major smiling muscles, the risorius and the zygomatic major-- or while holding a pen clenched between their teeth, which had the opposite effect and forced them to smile. The people with the pen between their teeth found the cartoons much funnier. Emotion doesn't just go from the inside out. It goes from the outside in. What's more, neither the subjects "assuming the position" nor the people with pens in their teeth knew they were making expressions of emotion. In the facial-feedback system, an expression you do not even know that you have can create an emotion you did not choose to feel." {emphases added}
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, I was at the dentist today. It was my third visit on a Monday in as many weeks, as we've been deep-cleaning my teeth quadrant by quadrant. (The fourth quadrant, due to scheduling, was cleaned weeks ago.)
Here's the thing -- I put two and two together, and I think I know why people go nuts at the dentist.
We're forced to "assume the position" -- in this instance, we're forced to adopt expressions of fear and anger. Lips curled, teeth exposed. And being forced to adopt the expressions of fear, we become fearful.
The real kicker? Given the mechanics of what needs to be done in dentistry, the physical tasks that need to be accomplished... I can't think of any way to get the job done without contorting our faces into those particular expressions.
I think this may be related to why drugs work to calm some people down and not others. Because, drugs or not, the forced facial expressions are always the same.
I try to be a good patient, as always, I really do. But if you're going to induce fear and anger in me, without allowing me any control in the matter... Well, you get what you get.
(Re the title: "Calculus" isn't always a mathematical term.)
