Ever wish you could call “time out” during your presentation to ask the audience how you’re doing? Since that usually isn’t doable, your next best option is to scan people’s faces for emotional clues, but recent research suggests that can lead you astray, too.
In her new book How Emotions Are Made, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett claims that our beliefs about facial expressions need an overhaul. “When facial movements do convey a psychological message—say, raising an eyebrow—we don’t know if the message is always emotional,” she writes, “or even if its meaning is the same each time.
