I understand your larger point but many psychological assessments cannot be conducted virtually, though development in that area continues. Additionally, if assessment for social skills (such as ASD assessments) is the goal, that needs to be done in person.
PsychoNot
joined 2 years ago
I’ve been listening to a ton of Sleep Token. I don’t really follow the cult lore around them, but the music is fantastic.
This was a very brief explanation of many studies looking into this exact problem. The conclusion is from their research, not mine. You’re also making my point, that expressions of joy, happiness etc vary between cultures. This article talks about some of the research but I recommend reading the original studies or Barrett’s book.
We actually don’t have the same emotional expressions. The early studies on “universal” emotional expressions (joy, disgust etc) were extremely biased. The researches paid western actors to make facial expressions, took pictures of those expressions, then showed those pictures to various uncontacted / low contact tribes. However, the researches tended to ask the tribes what expression they saw repeatedly until they gave the answer the researches expected.
Even smiling isn’t universal. Think about cultural differences between smiling even in modern day Russia. There’s evidence that smiling might have been an expression of joy but was deemed socially inappropriate in Ancient Rome.
Emotional expressions in the brain differ between individuals and even differ within the same individual on separate occasions of the “same” emotion. Lisa Barrett has an excellent book on this topic: How Emotions are Made.
Oh absolutely, I do something very similar and while I do have to travel in a similar way, I certainly could never justify, nor would I want a vehicle like that.