How Our Brains Read People

For centuries, philosophers and scientists have struggled to discover the mysterious origins of human language. A growing body of psychological research may have developed a neurological answer to this question, finding that language is closely intertwined with our abilities to empathize with and understand other people. Not only does recent scholarship suggest that our language…

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Emotion Recognition and Da Vinci

Is the Mona Lisa smiling? There seems to be little doubt that we can learn a great deal through artwork, and a recent study on Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa painting can help shed light on our facial expression recognition skills, as well. This painting has long intrigued viewers, presenting an ambiguous facial expression…

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Can We Learn Empathy from Robots?

Many people familiar with science fiction tend to have an ingrained fear and repulsion at what are seen as cold and unfeeling robots. The idea of widespread artificial intelligence brings to mind terrifying visions from films such as The Terminator or The Matrix, both of which present an apocalyptic future where artificial intelligence turns on…

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Empathy and Facial Expressions

Do you think you’re good at reading other people’s facial expressions? You might be surprised! While facial expressions provide a key insight into the emotions of other individuals, empathy may be even more important for laypeople to understand the emotions of fellow humans. In a new study, Dr. Haotian Zhou from Shanghai Tech University and…

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