Have you ever tried to hide your emotions from someone during a conversation? (9)
Scientists from the Ohio State University have found that people are able to tell other people's emotions according to changes in the colour of their faces.
Scientists studied pictures of people's facial expressions. (10) For example, happiness makes our faces red around the cheeks and a little blue around the chin. Disgust(厌恶) creates not only a blue-yellow colour around the lips, but also a red-green colour around the nose and forehead.
"We believe these colour patterns are the result of small changes in blood flow triggered(触发) by the central nervous system (神经系统)," lead researcher Alex Martinez said.
(11) Does the colour alone or also facial expressions help people tell others' emotions?
To figure this out, scientists added colour patterns to pictures of faces that showed no facial expressions. (12) They were able to tell the emotions 75 per cent of the time without any difficulties.
(13) For example, when two people are heatedly arguing over something, we'd say they are red in the face. When a person is very angry, we'd say he or she is blue in the face.