Show Me How You Walk And I’ll Tell You How You Feel
Christopher Philip
The body in nonverbal communication has finally received the research attention it has long deserved and has linked regions of the brain which are attuned to emotional walking styles.
A team of researchers led by Sabrina Schneider University Clinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tuebingen, Germany connected subjects to near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The device measures brain activity by comparing the concentration of oxygenated haemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxygenated haemoglobin (HHb) in various parts of the brain. To accomplish this, various “optodes” including 17 light sources emitters and 16 detectors are placed on the subjects head.
Avatar videos were created with the help of 13 amateur theatre actors recorded using a motion capture system. In total 8 cameras recorded bodies in motion. Videos were created for neutral walking as well as emotionally expressive walking including anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. The resulting clips were grey and appeared as an avatar walking on a treadmill. The video clips were 3 seconds in length.
The results showed that accuracy of emotional judgment by the subjects for gait was highest for sad and fearful, followed by angry and happy. The neutral walk was recognized the least.
The results from brain activity showed that significant activation increases were found for the emotions of sad, angry, and fearful gait patterns. These (for interest sake) occurred in the brain regions including the right EBA, the right ITG, and the left TPJ during the emotion task. Angry and fearful walks activated the left posterior STS. No such effect was found for the positive emotions. This is consistent with pervious research for whole body expressions.
Also of interest is the fact that conscious recognition and perception of the emotional gait patterns in the subjects correlated to activity (for the negative gaits) and lack of activity (for the positive gaits). In other words, when subjects did not recognize the gaits as well, such that which occurred in the positive walks, their brain also showed less activity.
Drawing Conclusions
We know that body language plays an important role in determining the emotions of others. However, unknown with certainty is how the brain reads the body.
The study supports the idea that specific brain regions including the right EBA, the right ITG, the left TPJ and the left posterior specifically handle STS negative emotions including sad, angry and fearful walking styles.
“Our results support the idea of a distributed brain network involved in the recognition of bodily emotion expression that comprises visual association areas as well as body/movement perception specific cortical regions that are also sensitive to emotion,” say the researchers in their paper.
In addition, the actual ability to consciously assess the emotions by the participants mediated that seen in brain activity. This suggests that the perception of emotion from walking styles is largely a natural process.
This is an important step forward in validating the effects of bodily expression in nonverbal communication.
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Resources
Schneider, Sabrina; Andrea Christensen; Florian B. Häußinger; Andreas J. Fallgatter; Martin A. Giese and Ann-Christine Ehlis. Show Me How You Walk and I Tell You How You Feel – A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study on Emotion Perception Based on Human Gait. NeuroImage. 2019, 85: 380-390 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.07.078.
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