Last but certainly not the least: anger. Anger is characterized by brows that are lowered together, eyes that give a hard stare, lips that are pressed firmly together and vertical lines between the brows but no horizontal lines on the forehead (Lewis 736; Turchet web ). This emotion is almost certainly the most dangerous because it is the one that is most likely to involve violence. As for all micro-expressions, the reasons for one to be anger are countless. Similarly to fear, there are multiple physical signs of anger: increase in blood pressure and changes in breathing, muscle tense (Ekman, Unmasking the Face, 76). However, knowledge of this micro-expression …show more content…
To do so, I used an accidental sampling technique in order to gather 20 participants each of whom, I asked via email to take part in my experiment. I used this sample technique because there were no particular requirements to participate in my experiment. Thus, anyone was a “valid” candidate. I asked my participants to do an experiment on the internet created by certified trainers in micro-expressions and body language: Patryk and Kasia Wezowski. In their test, the participants had to watch ten videos of ten seconds. For each of them, they had to guess what emotion was presented only by analyzing micro-expressions. However, since the goal of this experiment was to see if knowledge had an impact on the participants’ ability to recognize micro-expressions, in between tests, they had to go on a website where they learned about the significance and characteristics of micro-expressions. Thence, I had one control group where the participants did the experiment for the first time without having much information about the subject and, one experimental group in which the same participants had to complete the test for the second time after they learned more about micro-expressions. After they had completed the test twice, they had to send me their results by email. I collected the …show more content…
In my data analysis, I found that on average, there was a slight increase in the participants’ ability to accurately identify the right emotion only by watching at a short video. On the first test, the majority of participants completed the test with scores in the dozens or twenties. During the first test, most participants reported having difficulty choosing between the seven universal emotions. However, the videos were not very long and could not be repeated until an answer was selected. Nonetheless, with as much as 5 minutes of reading on the topic, their scores improved with an an average increase of 9.2%.There are some exceptions where some participants performed better on the first test than on the second test, but overall, the results were somewhat similar As a result of this experiment, I concluded that knowledge has an impact on one’s ability to recognize and identify micro-expressions Furthermore, I also believe that if all of the participants would have had a more intense and long training in micro-expressions recognition, they would see a bigger increase. Moreover, my research is valid because it measures exactly what I wanted to measure: The influence of knowledge on one’s ability to recognize micro-expressions. Thus, it corresponds exactly the concept of analyzing the influence of one element (knowledge) on another one (recognition). Likewise, it is a realistic experiment because it is