Facial Expressions and Gestures. Do They Boost Empathy or Contribute to Misunderstandings?
Do facial expressions and gestures boost empathy or contribute to misunderstandings?
Bodily empathy is this emotional connection with other people we have experienced since childhood.
When we see someone smiling, we’re flooded with positive emotions such as joy or happiness.
When another person experiences an injury, illness, or heartbreak, our facial expressions change automatically, and we start feeling sad or angry. We hug them and cry as if we were going through the same experience ourselves.
We’re deeply and instantly affected by other people’s emotions, which are expressed in their body language, faces, voices, and behaviors.
This powerful capacity helps us connect with our loved ones, our neighbors, friends, coworkers, and customers. However, bodily empathy has significant limitations.
There are various neurological and cultural differences between us. As a result, we process and express emotions differently. For example:
Some of us wear our emotions on our sleeve, while others are more reserved.
Gestures have different meanings across cultures.
Some people may find it difficult to read and express emotions through facial expressions.
Those neurological and cultural differences may become an obstacle to this automatic body-to-body connection between humans.