SSS 2012-06-22
时间：2018-12-24 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(六)月
英语课
To make a big impression, you’ve got to grin and bare it—your array of teeth, that is. Because people gazing at a crowd find it easier to spot someone with a toothy facial expression, whether it’s a happy smile or an angry snarl 1, than someone with a tight-lipped mug. The finding is in the Journal of Vision.
We apparently 2 evolved to spot people experiencing certain emotions quickly, a phenomenon called the emotional-face-in-a-crowd effect. Some studies indicated that angry-looking people jumped out at onlookers 3. Other studies said it was happy faces. The conflict may have stemmed from the type, or rather the toothiness, of the angry and happy faces used in the experiments.
To clear up the discrepancy 4, researchers created two facial expressions for each emotion, one with bared teeth and one without. They also created a neutral face. A dozen adults then had to pick out the target emotion from a group of faces. And they did it twice as fast when the target’s teeth were visible. The study thus fills a cavity in our understanding.
1 snarl
v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮
- At the seaside we could hear the snarl of the waves.在海边我们可以听见波涛的咆哮。
- The traffic was all in a snarl near the accident.事故发生处附近交通一片混乱。
2 apparently
adv.显然地；表面上，似乎
- An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
- He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。
3 onlookers
n.旁观者，观看者( onlooker的名词复数 )
- A crowd of onlookers gathered at the scene of the crash. 在撞车地点聚集了一大群围观者。
- The onlookers stood at a respectful distance. 旁观者站在一定的距离之外，以示尊敬。
4 discrepancy
n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾
- The discrepancy in their ages seemed not to matter.他们之间年龄的差异似乎没有多大关系。
- There was a discrepancy in the two reports of the accident.关于那次事故的两则报道有不一致之处。