READ AND ANSWER COMPLETELY Bear with me on this one and do your best to take it

Question

READ AND ANSWER COMPLETELY

Bear with me on this one and do your best to take it seriously -- it may show you something extremely cool. It might help to first close your eyes for a moment while you take a breath and relax... OK, here we go.

Make an angry face, clench your fist, and if you can, quietly snarl and lift your lip to expose your canine tooth (kind of like a growling dog). What do you feel?

Now shrug and lift your hands up and outward with your elbows in and against your sides, and lift your eyebrows a little, tilting your head to the side with a small smile. Any difference in your feelings?

Roll your shoulders forward and drop your head and make a very sad face. How about now?

Try to display a few other "typical" faces and body positions for different emotions - do your feelings differ for each?

Okay, here are your questions:

(a) What do the results of the above exercise suggest about your ability to change your own mood? Whose theory does your experience support?

(b) Why might your empathy for someone increase if, as they speak, you mimic their facial expressions?

Explanation / Answer

a. My personal experience with the exercise revealed that one can change their mood based on their facial expressions and bodily positions. This seems to support the James-Lange theory of emotion that proposes that physiological arousal precedes the experience of emotion.

b. Empathy is likely to increase when the facial expressions of the other individual is mirrored because it triggers greater activity in the emotion centers of the brain than merely observing the person's facial expressions. The activity takes place the insula, which is key to translating the imitation of others' feelings into meaningful emotion, researchers say.

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