Melbourne, June 27: Understanding and interpreting
facial expressions like anger, fear, happiness or sadness are
evolutionary skills people have developed in order to survive.
But, a new study has revealed that facial expressions
showing fear or anger are harder for the human brain to detect
in crowds than individually or in small groups, even in those
situations where people perceive there is a potential threat.
"As with anger, we perceive fear as a threatening
emotion. That`s because you don`t always know the source of
the fear. You can`t determine whether it`s because of you, or
whether it`s some larger threat.
"This study shows, that as humans, there is a limit to
what we can automatically perceive and process," according to
lead researcher Dr Mark Williams of Macquarie University in
Australia.
In their study, Dr Williams and colleagues used
functional magnetic resonance imaging or FMRI technology to
measure activity in specific areas of the brain in real time
to show which parts were active.
Study participants were shown multi-arrays of faces
with happy, fearful and neutral expressions. They were told to
identify the type of expression they saw. In the second part
of the study, they had to search for particular expressions.
Bureau Report