Washington, September 04: It’s often said that seeing is believing. But, a new study says that believing is seeing too — when it comes to perceiving other people’s emotions.
An international team has carried out the study and found that people see facial expressions based on what they expect to see — a pattern that can lead to trouble, the latest issuse of the ‘Psychological Science’ journal reported.
In fact, researchers have found that the way people initially think about the emotions of others biases their subsequent perception and memory of their facial expressions.
Co-author Prof Jamin Halberstadt of the University of Otago said: “So once we interpret an ambiguous or neutral look as angry or happy, we later remember and actually see it as such.
–PTI