How Much You Smile Could Predict Your Divorce Potential

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Turn that frown upside down

In a 2009 study from DePauw University, researchers found that how much you smiled as a child and young adult could accurately predict your divorce potential. Check it out.

I find that fascinating because I believe emotional expressions are windows to our soul, and who we are as people. I also believe we are hard-wired to feel certain emotions. I suspect that our facial structure actually predisposes us to feel certain emotions more than others. The reason I say that is people who have what I call a very happy face structure (high check bones, broad smiles, and round faces) are typically happy people. Ask people with these faces next time, and they can’t help but smile! And people with heavy brows often stress and frown more. It’s just the way it is.

People who have droopy outer corners of their eyes will have more of a tendency to feel sadness.

So I absolutely believe people who frown more and smile less are much more likely to have a marriage end in divorce. Do you?

15 Signs A Marriage May End In Divorce

Do you have “cognitive” or “affective” empathy?

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brain lobes

A team of researchers, led by Robert Eres, from Monash University in Australia, have identified that people have physically different brains depending on the type of empathy they have.

I do not find this surprising at all. I believe that who we are is much more hard-wired than most of us realize.

So the question is: Are you a rational or emotional decision maker?

If you are emotional, you have affective empathy. If you are rational, you are a cognitive empathy.

When I sum up a person in front of me when assessing people, this is one element I look for immediately.  People wear how they make decision on their face.

Why is this important for me?  Because if you are telling me something, I will know how reliable you are by the type of decisions you make (rational or emotional).  Emotions cloud judgement and will affect one’s ability to see things clearly and that matters when getting to the truth!

Technology Slows Ability To Recognize Emotions

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There is an interesting study done that looked at children and their interactions with digital media. Did you know the more a child is connected, the less skill he has at being able to recognize emotions in others?

As they surmise, you cannot learn about human interaction by watching it on a screen. You have to experience it firsthand.  I agree with that completely.

How much time does your child spend a day, or a week playing video games, using a cell phone, tablet or watching TV?

Check out this article.

Many thanks to MF for the story!

Attempted Robbery and Mirror Neurons

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Here is an interesting video recorded by a Go Pro camera that documents an attempted robbery of a guy riding his bicycle in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Go ahead and watch it if you haven’t.

Chances are your mirror neurons (cells in your brain) will light up as this guy experiences fear and hence so will you! Mirror neurons make us feel what others are feeling when we see them go through an experience. You know when you see a friend cut their finger with a sharp object and you wince?  That’s your mirror neurons!

I find mirror neurons fascinating.

When I teach my class to students, I frequently feel the power of mirror neurons in a really strange way.

I play a lot of emotional videos in my training class and my students mirror neurons work very well. They always mirror the emotions of the victims or suspects in the video beautifully. But I wasn’t prepared for how it would bounce and further affect me.

As the instructor, I have seen these videos hundreds of times so I don’t typically watch them. I am usually not listening to the content of the video or thinking about it either. I am often thinking about other things that I need to do and inevitably, through natural pauses in thinking and looking up at my students, I find my face starting to react to my students’ emotions.

I will start to feel a flush of an emotion overcome me.  It’s surreal because I might be thinking I need to check-in for my flight tomorrow when I start feeling this rush of sadness.  And I will catch the feelings of sadness and be perplexed. Why do I suddenly feel sad?  And then I have to re-orient myself and ask what video are we playing right now?  And 100% of the time the  emotions I am starting to feel correlate to the video playing, but  I am not watching it or listening to it.  But I am glancing at my students and obviously my mirror neurons are firing from seeing them!

It’s the strangest thing.

It’s what I would call a mirror neuron bounce effect. A person in the video feels an emotion. They express it. My students watch it, and they feel what the person in the video feels. Then I see the faces of people watching the video, and I, too, react to them watching the video. It all happens involuntarily, too.

I never expected that mirror neurons would bounce like that, but I have experienced it enough to know they do, and when I see a really intense emotion expressed on a face, I will start to experience the strong flood of emotion myself regardless of the source!

So I wonder, does the movement of the facial muscles activate the mirror neurons?  Or do the mirror neurons activate the facial muscles?