Transcriber: Gia Hwang Reviewer: Carol Wang
Hey everybody.
Normally, TED talks begin with some profound words,
some words that have some huge general meaning
but are meant to resonate with each of you
for months, years, hopefully after this talk is over.
But today, I’m going to talk about something considerably more organic,
something more natural, an idea that you should come to yourself,
that I can help foster.
And that’s why today I’m going to try something different.
Here, we have an image of a 27-year-old on trial for murder of her own son.
Now, the minutia of the case,
the way that she murdered her own son is irrelevant right now.
What I want to talk to you about is her face.
Take a look at her face and tell me, does she seem at all remorseful,
does she seem guilty,
does she seem like a cold-blooded killer,
in the fact that she’s just killed her own child and is now smiling?
It looks cinematic.
This isn’t someone that you likely don’t know,
this isn’t somebody that the world hasn’t heard of.
This, here, is Casey Anthony.
Casey Anthony was the lady on trial in Florida around eight years ago,
in a trial that got landmark national attention from the media,
and in a time where social media was rising in popularity.
Now, why is this case relevant?
The actual nature of the case is not that relevant
to what we’re going to talk about today,
but the fact that it attracted and garnered the public attention so virally
is what’s so important.
And it’s the actual phenomena that you all just exemplified,
that’s actually something key to discuss.
When you saw that face,
you thought there’s a guilty woman smiling and doesn’t care about the fact
that her own daughter, in this case Caylee Anthony, is dead.
Don’t worry if you felt that way,
don’t feel guilty, it’s what a majority of America thought at the time.
But what’s key to note is not whether she was guilty or not,
which the jury and judge did not find her guilty for,
it’s the actual way that we perceive these expressions.
It’s the way we see someone’s face
and make a conclusion about what emotion they might be experiencing.
And of course, it’s not uncommon for you to think she’s guilty.
With promotional material like that,
it looks more like she could be a feature in a horror movie,
in an action movie that would be depicting her as a murderer.
And at this point, it makes it a question of guilty until proven innocent,
not the other way around.
Well, today I want to talk about not relitigating the Casey Anthony case,
but rather how we actually perceive emotions.
How do we look at someone’s facial expressions
and come to a conclusion about what they’re feeling?
So why this questioning of how we actually see expressions?
Why are we requesting this entire idea that seems pretty innate?
Well, welcome the theory of constructed emotion.
The theory of constructed emotion
essentially posits that emotions are ad hoc.
They’re unique to each and every one of us
and they’re created in a really unique, personal way.
They’re not universal, they don’t apply to everybody,
and the way that we express them
and the actual way that our expressions relate to our feelings
are entirely unique to each and every one of us.
Now, this began with Dr. Lisa Barrett, a researcher at Northeastern University,
who decided to answer something called “the emotional paradox”.
The emotional paradox essentially suggests
that normally if we see someone else’s facial expressions,
we know what emotion they are feeling.
But if we’re asked what criteria we use to make that judgment,
we often never have a consistent answer.
Essentially, if you’re walking down the street
and you were to see someone who's angry on their face,
you'd likely be correct in inferring that they're angry.
Then if someone else was asked to make the same conclusion,
they’d also come to conclusion that they were angry.
But if asked what was your reasoning, why, you wouldn’t have the same answer.
Now for researchers who look at very things very objectively,
that’s a question they want to answer.
It’s asymmetry, this inconsistency that they sought to actually answer.
What happened was Dr. Lisa Barrett ran a few more studies
and basically posited the theory that emotions are made individually
and that they're made differently in each person.
That’s why when we infer other people’s emotional states,
it’s not universal.
There’s not this biological fingerprint
that goes to everyone’s universal emotional expression.
It's individual to each of us.
And this was continued with the researcher
from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Dr. Kristen Lindquist basically found
that when we showed the same exact expression,
different parts of our brain,
we’re creating that emotion,
and essentially debunking centuries of thought
where we basically believed that emotions are universal
and that everyone treats them with the same parts of brain.
It’s essentially extending the ideas of diversity we already know
to the actual way we express our emotions.
Scientists gave a good analogy when described it.
They described it as if your brain is a Christmas tree,
different sections of light glow under various circumstances,
which baffled scientists for centuries.
But under further analysis, it was found
that there was 1 light connecting all other Christmas lights together
that was critical to all the lights luminosity.
Now this isn’t something that normally people are fascinated by,
unless you’re a psychologist or someone who really does like this study,
the study of affective science, the study of emotions.
So how does it apply to you?
Well, that therein lies the problem.
While the academic sphere has already adjusted to accepting
how emotional diversity exists
and how everyone shows emotions in a different way,
the public has yet to do so.
And as a result, most people don’t understand
the actual application of the theory of constructive emotion.
Well, let me show you a few examples.
In the medical diagnosis field,
oftentimes practitioners are tasked making a diagnosis to a patient,
and this can range from mental health to really underlying biological diseases.
Now the critical thing is not the actual diagnosis itself,
but how the inference of another person’s emotional state
can actaully influence what diagnosis the practitioner gives.
And in this, we can found the actual objective judgement
with something that’s far more nuanced
and something that researchers have found we’re not right getting.
We’re not correct in knowing what emotion someone is experiencing,
so how can we let it influence this diagnosis.
And what's the problem?
We don’t recognize the nuanced emotion.
This continues to the classroom.
Many of you in kindergarten and 1st grade or 2nd grade,
likely had a squabble with fellow student,
and instead of actually having to eloquently
or concisely describe your emotions to a teacher,
you were essentially asked,
Can you please identify your emotions with some face on this poster?
The reason we do this is because for a kid in that age,
it’s considerably easier to describe your emotions that way
than it is to describe them in a really eloquent and really verbal manner.
But the issue is what this does is it oversimplifies emotions,
it boils emotions down into these cookie cutter faces that everyone should have,
that everyone should show.
And the issue is science doesn’t support that.
Science shows that oftentimes we don’t express emotions the same way,
and that furthermore, when we infer people’s expressions,
we’re oftentimes wrong, and actually identifying what emotion they’re feeling.
And now returning to the courtroom,
the same situation that occurred with Casey Anthony,
where essentially she was deemed as a guilty person on trial
before the trial even began,
because people saw faces and photos that I showed you earlier
and said, “she’s definitely guilty.”
She doesn't have any remorse. She doesn't care.
She murdered her own daughter and has no emotional feeling about it.
The issue is, once again,
we are not accurately able to infer other people’s emotional states,
so how can we make this judgment?
And the whole issue of criminal justice system
extends even beyond public perception.
Even inside the courtroom, judges, when they’re doing sentencing hearings,
oftentimes look at a defendant’s expression and says,
If they’are exemplifying remorse, then I’ll make a lighter sentence;
or if they have no remorse, then they’ll have harsher sentence,
which is the logical way to go about it.
Now the question of sentencing is a topic for its own,
but what’s key to note is
if we’re inaccurately able to identify one’s emotion,
why should we
let it influence the sentencing verdicts we give in the courtroom?
Now, for those of you that aren’t legal enthusiasts,
or medical practioners, or teachers, this likely doesn’t matter to you.
You’re probably thinking, Why does this apply to me?
Well, emotions are at the basis of how we interact.
When you see someone down street very sad,
your instintual desire is to find out why they’re sad,
try to help them find solace. it’s the human thing to do.
And if you see someone happy,
you’re likely to see
what’s making them happy and try replicating that in yourself
because that’s what we as people do when we interact.
It’s emotions that guide how we talk to each other,
how we communicate.
All I’m saying today is not that
if you see someone on street, they seem sad, you should say
“I don’t know if they are sad. They could be happy
just showing themselves crying.”
That’s not what I’m saying today.
What I’m saying here today is that we need to accept
there’s more context, more informaiton that goes into emotions
and especially how we express them,
and that essentially you should still help the person who appears sad on street,
but also recognize that in many cases like where we see an uncontextualized photo
as was the case with Casey Anthony I showed you in the beginning.
We have to recognize more nuance.
We have to recognize there’s more to go into it,
we can’t make preemptive judgements about emotion.
And the question is, how are we going to go about it?
Because if we can accept more emotional diversity
the same we’ve accepted social diversity,
then we’ll also be able to avoid the entire Casey Anthony situation,
which, for the record, even till today she’s viewed as guilty.
She was acquitted in the courts and is still seen as a public enemy.
And so if we have more acceptance of emotional diversity,
then there’s good chance we’ll have less cases as Casey Anthony
where the lady can’t walk outside on the street
because everyone thinks she’s already committed the crime.
We all have emotions, we know that;
and we all express them our own way, we know that.
Now it’s the quesiton of accepting that we express them differently.
Thank you.
(Applause)