[nabs-l] Awkward Situations: What would you do?

Domonique Lawless dlawless86 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 20 23:38:43 UTC 2009


Joseph,
	For some reason blind people just cannot pull off blank face. I have
no idea why this is but every blind person I know (including myself)
is like an open book when it comes to displaying emotions. I would
really love to know if there is a scientific or psychological reason
behind this.

Domonique


On 9/20/09, Joseph C. Lininger <jbahm at pcdesk.net> wrote:
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> Teal,
> LOL That's funny. Honestly, I've never had much sight and never had
> muscle control over my eyes. So I don't know much about looking at other
> people, eye contact, that sort of thing. I have been told it's
> disconcerting for a person to never make eye contact, and that it's even
> more disconcerting for a person to make eye contact constantly and never
> break it. I'm afraid I never learned the finer points though.
>
> This is somewhat related, and I'd be curious to know what the
> psychologists and sociologists among you think. I'll need to lay a
> little ground work for the more general question, so bare with me. I've
> known for some time that my emotions and moods  are communicated
> visually, at least sometimes. But I had something happen that actually
> got me curious about trying to find out exactly how it happens. We had a
> router go down in a data center at a company I had been working for a
> few months ago. I'd had a bad day the day before trying to get
> everything working, and that router went down at about 4 am and took the
> entire company off the Internet. Well, I came out of my hotel room and
> one of the first things the guy driving me to the data center said was,
> "wow Joe, you look really pissed off. Like maybe you'd like to kill
> someone." I hadn't given any hint to being pissed off, though I was. I
> wasn't even aware of it being communicated in my looks, I'd tried to
> look pleasant and ready for another day despite the promise of yet more
> problems.
>
> After this, I became curious about exactly how expressive or not I was
> with body language, facial expressions, etc. I asked people who had
> known me for a while, mainly family members about it and they all said I
> was in fact expressive visually, at least to a point. My sister even
> provided a running commentary one day for a few minutes on what my face
> was doing while conversing with people at her house. So, here's my question.
>
> I always thought that at least to a point people learned these
> expressions and that mostly by observing those around them and learning
> what they meant. I knew basic stuff like a smile or frown didn't work
> that way, and I could even understand certain reflexive expressions. For
> example, stiffening in response to fear or anger. However, I thought the
> more detailed stuff, arching eyebrows, moving of the eyes with certain
> expressions, that sort of thing was learned behavior. Well, seeing in
> how I can't see others doing these things and never have been able to,
> how would I have possibly picked them up? Have any experiments been done
> regarding such things? And more interesting... Some stuff, such as
> nodding, shaking the head, or shrugging, I had to be specifically taught
> those while I didn't other expressions. Does anyone have any ideas on
> what governs what visual cues are natural or learned in spite of lack of
> vision and which must be picked up visually?
> - --
> Stress (N): The condition that occurs when ones mind overrides the
> body's natural desire to reach out and slap the hell out of someone
> who desperately deserves it.
> Joseph C. Lininger, <jbahm at pcdesk.net>
>
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