Interpreting emotions: A matter of confidence. We are exposed to the facial expressions of the people. But do we interpret them correctly? And do we trust our own judgment? This trust is essential for avoiding potentially dangerous situations. Researchers have been testing how confident we feel when judging other people's emotions, and what areas of the brain are used. These results demonstrate that beliefs of our own emotional interpretation stem directly from the experiences stored in our memory. Source 5a.
But does that mean that if we don't have experience with a certain emotion, that we can not read it from other people's faces and way of acting?
Like if a person has no experience with joy, but sees a person smiling and jumping for joy, can the person not see that it is actual happiness that drives these actions?
It seems a hard topic to wrap your head around.
There are certain people that can not read emotions at all, so I think by looking at the deficiencies in their brains, we can see what parts of the brain are used, generally, when assessing emotion.
A lot of how we judge others is based on our experiences. When someone reacts to something in a way we think is unusual we base it on what we know but perhaps something happened to them that explains it… something that we have never experienced.