surprise

Surprise! When it comes to surprise there is a lot less information available. This is after all, the briefest emotion as it lasts a maximum of a few seconds. To feel this emotion you must be caught completely off guard,it must be a stimulus that you were not able to anticipate and it is obligatory sudden. If an unexpected event is happening slowly it does not surprise a person. This is why surprise is the hardest emotion to photograph! This emotion is very fascinating since it’s so brief it gives a huge challenge to its researchers. When surprise passes and we figure out what happened it merges with the next stimulus and results in anger, happiness, fear or any other emotion. Knowing this, it is deducted that we can easily be manipulated into a state of mind. The best way to induce surprise is by using out of context sudden stimulus, example, you are in class in a medical school when all of a sudden a belly dancing group comes in dancing with their bells… this would cause surprise amongst the scholars. Also when surprised we do not have enough time and effort to deliberately modify our behaviour. That being said we give our position away, for example you are a rep in sales, you say that you know everything about the product, but when the client suddenly tells you a feature you were not aware of you show surprise and you gave away the fact that you might not know as much as you said. Some researchers on emotions do not think surprise is an emotion since it is neither positive nor negative, but I support Dr. Ekman’s opinion, in that the moment or two before we figure out what is occurring, before we switch to another emotion or no emotion, surprise itself can feel good or bad. This is true because of our behaviour in society; if you look at individuals there are the ones that do not like being surprised even if it’s a positive situation, other love being surprised, which explains why some people do not plan ahead deliberately, they want to have unexpected surprises to flow through their day. Everyone experiences it differently and in the most part I believe we can all agree that it does feel like something. The only part of surprise that is unusual and that is not similar to any other emotion in the fact that it cannot last more than a few seconds.

Surprised Blindness

Easily manipulated when surprised… how does it work? Well research from Vanderbilt University reveals for the first time how our brains coordinate these two types of attention and why we may be temporarily blinded by surprises. In their study, the research team asked individuals to detect the letter "X" in a stream of letters appearing on a screen while their brain activity was being monitored using a fMRI. Occasionally, an image of a face would unexpectedly interrupt the stream. The surprise caused the subject to completely miss the "X", despite the fact they were staring directly at the part of the screen on which it appeared. Once they realised what was going on they were eventually able to identify it as successfully as when there was no surprise. This shows once again how important it is to have an unexpected spontaneous stimulus to generate surprise. The researchers hypothesize that we may be temporarily blinded by surprise because the surprise stimulus and subsequent response occupies so much of our processing abilities.

Surprise vs. Startle

While surprise is an emotion, startle is not. Even if it is used as a synonym in common talking, its facial expression is the exact opposite of surprise. If startled nearly immediately the eyes close tightly (in surprise they open wide), the eyebrows lowered (in surprise the eyebrows are raised), and the lips stretched tensely (in surprise the jaw drops open). As if that was all, there are three other differences. First, the timing of the startle is even more constrained than surprise; the expression is always apparent in one-quarter of a second and is over in one-half of a second. It is so fast that if you blink you will miss seeing someone startled. Second, being told you are about to be startled by a very loud noise reduces, in most people, the magnitude of the reaction, but doesn't eliminate it. You can't be surprised if you know what is going to happen. Third, no one can inhibit the startle reaction, even if one is told exactly when a loud noise will occur. Most people can inhibit all but the subtlest signs of an emotion, especially if they are prepared ahead of time. Startle is a physical reflex, rather than an emotion.

written by: Tarek Benzouak

#emotions