Give us a smile
Women smile more often and men frown more often, but this could be due to cultural expectations, suggests research.
The study, A large-scale analysis of sex differences in facial expressions, published in PLOS One, builds on prior evidence suggesting women smile more often than men, but considers a greater variety of facial expressions, revealing complex gender patterns.
The US researchers used new automated facial coding technology to analyse the expressions of 2,106 people from France, Germany, China, the US and the UK as they watched video adverts. In addition to smiling more than the men, the women engaged in more ‘inner brow raises’, an expression taken to indicate fear or sadness.
The men frowned more, usually taken to be a show of anger, but as the researchers note, this might have reflected greater concentration, or confusion.
Other research suggesting there is a close association between emotions and facial expressions points to the latest results meaning women are more prone to feeling happy, but also more anxious (or more inclined to show these emotions), and that men are more likely to feel angry (or more confused.)
The researchers suggested this could be due partly to different social expectations and pressures placed on the genders, such as how in many countries happiness is seen as more desirable for girls than for boys.
The smallest observed gender differences were in the UK. Women in the US were the most smiley, while women in the UK and Germany frowned least.
l Read more here: http://bit.ly/2rSW7SE
Keep on tripping?
Another study has highlighted the potential for positive impact from taking psychedelics – this time it’s to do with heightening consciousness. Since coaching’s aim can be to increase self-awareness, the question arises – is there a place for psychedelics in coaching?
Building on research suggesting that psychedelics can elicit “spiritual” experiences, alleviate end-of-life angst, and perhaps treat depression, a paper, Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD
and psilocybin, published in the journal, Scientific Reports, suggests they do all this by heightening consciousness.
The researchers at the University of Sussex re-analysed existing magneto-encephalography brain imaging data recorded from healthy people who’d taken psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms), LSD or ketamine.
Compared with people in a normal waking state, the ‘tripping’ volunteers, regardless of which drug they’d taken, showed a “sustained increase in neural diversity”. As unpredictability and diversity are greater in awake (conscious) people
than those asleep (not conscious), the data can be interpreted as signifying an even higher level of consciousness while under
the influence of psychedelics than is experienced during normal wakefulness,the team argued.
- Read more here: http://go.nature.com/2tdsKbt
I’m bored with this
Boredom seems to be more about what we choose to do than with our personality, suggests research.
A nationally representative sample of 4,000 US adults used an iPhone app to record their mood every waking half-hour, with boredom turning up in only 3% of the entries.
Boredom was often mixed with other negative emotions, such as loneliness and sadness, and rarely with positive ones and, surprisingly for the researchers, it had a strong relationship with anger, going against the idea that boredom, itself low-arousal, can’t mix with more intense feelings.
The report, Bored in the USA: Experience sampling and boredom in everyday life, found people with lower income and less education were more likely to be bored while women and married people were less likely to be bored.
A large chunk of the differences were explained by how different groups used their time rather than being intrinsic to them.
Thirty per cent of the difference in boredom levels between men and women was accounted for by how much time they spent doing what turned out to be less boring activities – sports, exercise, personal grooming, time with friends and family – versus activities where boredom rates were higher, such as study, working and interacting with strangers.
- Read more here: http://bit.ly/2rnDYco
- Contributions to this slot are welcome.
Email: liz@coaching-at-work.com