The Anatomy of "The Look"

The four of us (Amie, Anna, Juli, and Michael) are blessed to be surrounded by brilliant researchers, enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with the greater public. Therefore, today we would like to present you with the first of a series of guest bloggers who will be joining Psych Your Mind. Our first guest blogger is Jenny, a fellow graduate student at UC Berkeley. Take it away Jenny!

"The Look"
Clockwise from top left, Representative Anthony Weiner of New York, former Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, former Representative Eric J. Massa of New York, President Bill Clinton and former Senator John Ensign of Nevada.

I’m sure most of you will recognize these pictures, and many of you may even remember the exact moments when they were taken. Certain words immediately come to mind: disgrace, fall, scandal, regret. These eerily similar expressions all occurred during the variety of infidelity scandals that have rocked the political scene. This picture, now being called “the look,” has been floating around the internet for the last few weeks.  It provides a great opportunity for social psychologists to rally around the importance of non-verbal expressions in communication and how power can affect our emotional experience. 

The expressions of these disgraced politicians may be a bit confusing. It’s clear they express negative feelings, but which exactly? Take a second and look at them, do you feel a sense of sympathy, perhaps anger, or even suspicion? Their expressions are complicated and they say a lot. In some ways they communicate exactly what they are meant to, “I’m sorry, I’m ashamed, I’m disappointed in myself.”  But some other feelings also may be coming through, “I’m mad I got caught and I resent having to be here.” Facial expressions although they can be controlled can often be an honest communicator of our feelings, even when we don’t want them to be. To understand these expressions, let’s start at the beginning and break it down piece by piece.

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