So many thoughts and connections, but the thought of the moment comes from some class discussions about examples of analytics in the media, one of which was Lie to Me, and its use of analytics and Paul Ekman's Facial Action Coding System. Which led me to comment that it's interesting how we're getting to a state with technology and computational power that things which might not seem at all mathematical can now be effectively quantified, measured, and analyzed. That is, things like facial expressions and emotions.
Several of our articles for this next week are about intuition and decision-making. We've already covered a bit of ground in the class discussions regarding behavioral economics, the work of Kahneman & Tversky, Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and the cognitive science behind intuition. Several of my classmates and I have already said that intuition is the brain essentially performing analytics faster than conscious thought - crunching a lifetime of experiences and knowledge and data on sub-conscious observations and associations about a situation to create something you "just feel."
The talk of intuition made me remember Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, an amazing book (and one I believe every woman should read, especially if you live in a big city, but that's another topic). De Becker talks a lot in his book about trusting your intuition, and the survival signals you pick up on (usually subconsciously). The book is full of numerous story examples of people's intuitions, and in some cases when de Becker spoke to the people about their experiences, he was able to suss out numerous details which they had perceived and responded to without ever consciously thinking about them. But the point is they had noticed all these many details at the time, and their brain had processed them more quickly than they could have consciously broken them down and articulated them.
So where do the mirror neurons come in? Well, mirror neurons have this funny ability, such that when you watch a person perform an action or make a face, the mirror neurons in your own brain fire, mimicking the same pathways that you would use if you were to perform that action or make that same face yourself. Your brain is mirroring what you see, as if you were doing it yourself. According to neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, in an interview with Scientific American, "[mirror neurons] are obviously essential brain cells for social interactions. Without them, we would likely be blind to the actions, intentions and emotions of other people. ... When I see you smiling, my mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, initiating a cascade of neural activity that evokes the feeling we typically associate with a smile. I don’t need to make any inference on what you are feeling, I experience immediately and effortlessly (in a milder form, of course) what you are experiencing"
Now back to Ekman and his Facial Action Coding System. Ekman also has done a good bit of research into people who are very good at reading other people, such as being able to tell when someone is lying. And he has found that what makes those people's intuition so good is their ability to pick up on and recognize micro-expressions. Micro-expressions are fleeting, involuntary facial expressions that reveal an emotion that someone is otherwise either concealing or unaware of. They last only a fraction of a second. Most of us miss them entirely, never noticing them at all. But some people are innately good at picking up on them. And even better than that, people can be trained to catch these fleeting expressions. (There's an excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell about Paul Ekman's work on Gladwell's website, which is also incorporated into chapter 6 of Blink)
Now back to Ekman and his Facial Action Coding System. Ekman also has done a good bit of research into people who are very good at reading other people, such as being able to tell when someone is lying. And he has found that what makes those people's intuition so good is their ability to pick up on and recognize micro-expressions. Micro-expressions are fleeting, involuntary facial expressions that reveal an emotion that someone is otherwise either concealing or unaware of. They last only a fraction of a second. Most of us miss them entirely, never noticing them at all. But some people are innately good at picking up on them. And even better than that, people can be trained to catch these fleeting expressions. (There's an excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell about Paul Ekman's work on Gladwell's website, which is also incorporated into chapter 6 of Blink)
So I just wanted to connect the dots. I'd be willing to bet that the intuition that comes from picking up on micro-expressions is a result of the activity of mirror neurons, that they are the mechanism underlying the ability to recognize those ephemeral emotions. For a fleeting second, as one's mirror neurons reflect the micro-expression, you feel what that other person is feeling, and if you're "in touch" with your intuitions, maybe you actually pay attention to and recognize whatever that feeling is, and act upon the information it provides you.
