Cosmetic surgery which freezes the face, like Botox, could also be freezing people’s emotions, and worse,. their ability to read other’s feelings. New evidence says the facial paralysis that does away with unwanted frown lines may cripple a crucial ability to process emotional language.
That’s the conclusion of David Havas, a psychological scientist at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Havas and his colleagues did not set out to study the unintended consequences of the controversial cosmetic treatment. Their goal was to study the role of the nervous system in normal language processing, specifically the idea that people comprehend emotional language in part by involuntarily simulating emotions with their facial nerves and muscles. They used injections of the neurotoxin to disable certain facial nerves as a way of testing this theory.
The scientists studied first-time patients who were scheduled for Botox treatment to get rid of their frown lines—a treatment that works by paralyzing a particular set of facial muscles. Since frowns are an important element in anger and sadness, they wanted to see if disabling the frown muscles impaired comprehension of sad and happy sentences—but not happy ones. They had the patients read dozens of sentences of each kind, both before Botox treatment and two weeks later, timing them to see if there was any slowdown in reading speed as a result of the treatment.
The results were unambiguous. As reported on line in the journal Psychological Science, the scientists not only verified their theory of language processing, they also showed that getting rid of frowns selectively impairs the ability to understand angry and sad sentences. In other words, it’s normal to frown—undetectably—when we try to process anger and sadness. If we can’t frown, our emotional understanding breaks down.
Source: Association for Psychological Science
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