If You Don't Feel It, Fake It: Some Emotions Harder to Imitate Than Others

Right as we saw our ex squeezing out tears, we knew from that awkward, held-back smile on their face, something was up. They were faking it.

Really? How could this be, you ask? Well, whether that scenario was true or not, we have to admit at one time or another, we've all twisted an expression for a loved one at the expense of their feelings. But now the question seems to be, how hard was this to do? 

Some researchers split the secrets on which emotions are the hardest to imitate.

Let's take a look at sadness first, an emotion that involves an expression and the desire to control that look.

"The tug of war over your face creates the quivering lip," said Dr. Mark Frank, professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Buffalo, according to PopSci.

Dr. David Matsumoto, the director of Humintell, also points out that when the face demonstrates fear, surprise will pull the eyebrows up while stress pushes the brows together and results in the inner corners of the eyebrows raising slightly.

 "Fear involves more muscles in the top of the face than other emotions," Matsumoto said. "We have much less neural connection to the forehead, the eyebrows and the upper eyelids than to the lower muscles in the face, so it becomes hard for us to voluntarily control them."

Yet, Dr. Hillel Aviezer, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem stresses that facial expressions are different from reactions. For example, a knee jerk is a response to sensory stimuli that in turn, activates motor responses that go to the brain.

 "Recreating the expression without feeling the emotion can be tricky. Many people are poor posers of expressions; they simply don't know what to move where," he said, according to PopSci.

And, to top it off, researchers note that emotions can be felt other places in the body that show, which may be a better indicator of intense emotions felt.

As for which one's the most complicated to fake, it might be different from person to person. Researchers believe to make it easier, go with what's happening to other's reactions around you. That'll at least make your "faking" look more realistic. (Gulp. We hope.)