"Face" the Truth

                According to a recent study done at the Boston Museum of Science, facial expressions around the world are not as similar as people may have once thought they were. To quickly summarize, when the group of scientists asked people to categorize facial expressions from all around the world, and separated them into two different groups. One group had to separate such expressions into predetermined categories while the other had to separate them just by what they thought, with no limits on grouping. The predetermined group test was a test done much earlier in history and thought to have no mistakes, which is why many people assume that everyone around the world has the same emotions associated with the same faces. This experiment was, in fact, flawed. This was shown through the newer experiment because nearly all of the participants had different groups in which they separated them and they had little to no correlation.

                This relates further into school and everything we have learned. In my AP Language class, we learned about logical fallacies and specifically one of them kind of applies to this case right here, which is also known as “tainting the well” which means that a person would insult another person and thereby nullifying anything he or she had to say. For example, calling someone a liar would pretty much mean they lie all the time and therefore cancel anything they say. This applies here to the predetermined group because it already has expressions down for people to group them in, so it greatly reduces the margin of error, but while reducing that margin of error, it also reduces how accurate the results are. As the test results came out, different people have different ways of classification.

                This is also like parenting and how I really hate how some people are not tolerant of others. I am sure everyone has seen those Tumblr posts about how everyone should be equal and actually has very good points. One such post went:

                                “You’re getting a tattoo? What will your kids think of it?”

                                “Nothing, because I won’t raise them to be as judgmental as yours,”

This shows that parents often taint  the well of the child when they grow up because everyone knows that a parent is one of the biggest influences on a child because most of the time, they are the ones that is there for the child the most, and so their personality, whether good or bad, will rub off on them.