Understanding emotion, emotional triggers, and nonverbal behavior requires moving beyond surface reactions to examine why certain situations elicit specific responses.
You may have heard of Alex Honnold- a famous rock climber who gained worldwide notoriety after becoming the first person to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
Most recently, Honnold climbed Taipei 101, a 1667 foot skyscraper, while it was streamed live on Netflix.
The story of Honnold — whose amygdala shows unusually low activation in response to fear-inducing images — provides a compelling case study in how the brain’s evaluation of events shapes emotional experience.
For professionals who study emotion, facial expressions, and nonverbal behavior, this research helps clarify a foundational truth:
Emotions are not triggered by events themselves, but by how the brain appraises those events.
Emotion Triggers: Appraisal and Psychological Themes
Emotion scientists generally agree that emotions are triggered through appraisal — a rapid cognitive evaluation of a stimulus that determines its emotional significance.
In Humintell’s work on what triggers emotions, this appraisal process is framed around universal psychological themes linked to basic emotions such as anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, contempt, and surprise.
Examples of these themes include:
Fear — triggered when something is appraised as threatening to physical or psychological integrity.
Happiness — elicited when an event is appraised as goal attainment.
Sadness — triggered by loss.
This perspective reframes emotion triggers not as simple reflexes, but as meaning-making processes that rapidly evaluate events (external situations, internal thoughts, or memories) in terms of their relevance to wellbeing or survival.
Honnold’s Brain: A Case of Appraisal Differences
The fMRI study of Alex Honnold’s brain found unusually low activation in his amygdala — a key region in threat detection and the generation of fear emotions — when he viewed fear-provoking imagery.
What this doesn’t mean is that Honnold cannot feel fear. Rather:
- His brain appears to appraise situations typically interpreted as threatening in a different way than most people.
- His emotional evaluation system may place less psychological threat value on those stimuli — likely because of how his experiences have shaped his appraisal patterns.
From an emotional trigger standpoint, Honnold provides a vivid example of how what counts as a threat — and what counts as safe — is defined by learned patterns of appraisal, not raw sensory input.
The Role of Experience in Emotional Interpretation
Appraisal theories of emotion emphasize that meaning is everything. The same event — a steep drop on a rock face, for example — may be appraised as threatening by one person and manageable by another based on:
- learned competence
- familiarity and mastery
- expectations of outcome
- somatic and cognitive associations
Honnold’s brain likely reflects repeated exposure and habituation, where what would trigger a strong fear response in most people no longer activates the same appraisal processes in him. This is consistent with how repeated experiences reshape emotional triggers over time.
For professionals who teach or assess emotional intelligence:
- Emotional triggers shift with experience.
- Appraisal centrality explains why individuals with expertise in a domain often show reduced fear-related facial expressions yet remain emotionally engaged.
Facial Expressions and Emotional Triggers
From a nonverbal behavior perspective, understanding triggers matters because the face does not just reflect emotion — it reflects appraisal outcomes.
A person’s appraisal of a stimulus influences:
- the intensity of the emotional response
- the presence or absence of facial indicators such as eye widening, brow movements, or tension in the mouth
- the timing and subtlety of microexpressions
This means that someone like Honnold may exhibit:
- subdued fear-related facial expressions
- more consistent facial control under pressure
- fewer nonverbal cues typically associated with threat appraisal
For analysts, this highlights a critical analytic point: absence of fear expressions does not equal absence of internal experience. It may reflect a different appraisal threshold or pattern.
Beyond the Amygdala: Regulation and Interpretation
While the amygdala is central to detecting potential threat, it does not act alone in shaping emotion. The prefrontal cortex contributes to emotional regulation by modifying the interpretation and behavioral expression of emotions — a key element of emotional intelligence.
In professional contexts:
- Emotional regulation influences how triggers manifest in the face and body.
- Skilled communicators can manage automatic appraisals, attenuating or amplifying emotional expression appropriately.
This interplay between appraisal, emotional triggers, and nonverbal expression underscores why emotion expertise must consider both internal evaluation processes and observable signals.
What This Means for Reading Emotions
The case of Honnold’s brain reinforces that emotional triggers are not uniform across individuals:
- A threat for one person may not be a threat for another.
- The same stimulus can produce divergent emotional and nonverbal responses based on history, appraisal, and cognition.
- Universal psychological themes guide basic emotion triggers, but personal experiences shape how and when these themes are activated.
For anyone practicing advanced emotion recognition, this means you must:
- Assess baseline appraisal patterns for individuals
- Understand that nonverbal expression reflects meaning-making, not just sensation
- Recognize that emotional triggers are dynamic, not fixed
Emotion as Adaptive Meaning-Making
Ultimately, emotion — including fear — is a dynamic system that results from how the brain evaluates and interprets what matters to the individual.
Honnold’s brain reminds us that emotion triggers are not simple reflexes but sophisticated appraisal mechanisms shaped by experience and context.
When we understand the role of appraisal and universal psychological themes in emotional triggers, we gain deeper insight into both why emotions arise and how they are expressed nonverbally — core knowledge for anyone committed to mastering emotional intelligence and behavior reading.