Humans behave in strange ways. We easily express our inner feelings at times when we feel weak, which doesn’t seem like the smart thing to do.
Just by looking at someone’s behavior, we can tell when they are feeling sick , frustrated, or disappointed. Surely the best strategy would be to try and hide the weakness? Why take the risk to be taken advantage of?
Many other animals rarely show a change in behavior when they are struggling. Veterinarians and veterinarians must rely on a variety of cues such as changes in blood pressure, heart rate, or hormone levels to get an idea of pain or stress what they are feeling. But could there be an advantage in telling about your vulnerabilities?
Our research (funded by the ERC, a research agency funded by the European Union ) investigates why we communicate using our bodies, faces, and hands. We find that these signals play a key role in how we build and maintain social networks. Specifically, experiment What we do is show you the more stressed you are, the more other people will find you fun.
Evolution and stress
We have long understood that stress and a person’s behavior are interrelated. When someone is stressed, they are more likely to exhibit what we call self-directed behavior. We touch our faces, we bite our nails, we fumble with objects and play with our hair. Very similar forms of stress behavior were seen in both monkeys and apes, which adds to the evidence that they descended from a common ancestor.
However, how other people perceive these stress-related behaviors has been a mystery to researchers. Do people even notice this behavior in other people? Can we detect when other people are stressed? How does that change our impression of them?
To investigate, we needed to induce mild stress in volunteers to study their behavior. They have three minutes to prepare for a mock job interview and presentation, which is immediately followed by a challenging math test.
It would not be surprising to find out most of the participants became stressed.
We showed these recordings of stressed volunteers to a new group of people, who rated behavior on a scale to see for example “How stressed is this person?” The results tell us what people look like when they’re stressed and what people think of them.
Apparently, humans are quite good at recognizing when someone is feeling stressed. The more stressed a person is, the more people perceive the person to be more stressed than they really are – a clear linear relationship. As expected, self-directed behavior appears to play an important role. The more stressful behavior a person produces, the more people perceive that person to be more stressed than they really are.
It should also be noted that this is not a subtle signal that only close friends can detect, as we asked strangers to make judgments about our participants.
New invention
The fact that other people can clearly detect when we are stressed is evidence that this behavior functions like other types of non-verbal communication (such as facial expressions, gestures) – a fact that has not been supported until now. This is the first study to find a real relationship between stress behavior and stress perception.
from shutterstock.com
The fact that those who are rated more stressed than the original are also considered the most likeable people may explain why we exhibit this side of weakness in the first place (and why they evolved). People’s first impressions of “stress signalers” are not negative, but are actually very positive. We expect people to take advantage of weaknesses but showing your vulnerable side encourages others to support and fosters social bonds.
We are a very cooperative species, more so than any other animal, and we are attracted to those who are honest about their intentions and thoughts. Nothing is more honest than saying that we are weak.
Other research shows stress may be a good thing which must be accepted. Our brains evolved to cope with challenges in the environment, and mild stress provides healthy challenges to keep our minds stimulated.
Communicating stress is the same. Show your feelings, good or bad. Don’t try too hard to hide your stress level during an important presentation or interview. Communicating honestly and fairly through your behavior can actually increase a positive impression on others.
Arina Apsarini from Binus University translated this article from English.
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