Well, most people–80% believe the tone of their email message will be clear, but the reality is they only get it right about 50% of the time, according to the University of Chicago. Now there is a new tool for those of us who are into precise communication. It’s called ToneCheck, and its free. Check it out.
Here is an interesting research study from Germany that studied the brain matter of psychopaths versus non-psychopaths.
The summary says:
This is the first study to show that psychopathy is associated with a decrease in gray matter in both frontal and temporal brain regions, in particular in the right superior temporal gyrus, supporting the hypothesis that a disturbed frontotemporal network is critically involved in the pathogenesis of psychopathy.
Of course, there is lots of research out there, but I have seen several studies over the years that talk about different brain structures of psychopaths.
Here is another fascinating study from BBC that talks about how psychopaths brains are different. In this article they talk about emotion recognition and the differences noted in the psychopathic brain. Fascinating stuff. As I always say, we are in the stone ages of understanding the brain, if you ask me.
If this is true, how can one not have sympathy for the mothers whose children kill?
New research has come out from the University of California at Berkeley that says if you are tried, your ability to distinguish between happy and angry facial expressions of moderate intensity drops significantly. Sleep deprived people rated these faces as less angry and less happy than they did when they got enough sleep.
If you have an important meeting or interview, and you want to be able to understand those around you, I have advice for you: Make sure you get a good night’s sleep! Ironically, I require a lot of sleep and make it a point to get it every day!
Here is an interesting article:
Pregnant women develop emotion-reading superpowers
(I think I saw this on Dr. David Matsumoto’s twitter page or blog a while back. He links to some great articles. Thanks, Dr. Matsumoto.)
A reader sent me this video this morning of the making of Avatar. It talks about how technology has changed animated acting, and how an animated actor’s facial expressions will be much more genuine than before. I thought you might enjoy this!
I have to say for me, if the actor isn’t good to begin with, it still won’t make much of a difference. Regular actors, for the most part, in general don’t capture my attention because they often miss the mark. Dang! I was hoping for some miracle 🙂
Thanks, Christoph.