Facial Mimickry of moods?

Question

"One way moods differ from the grosser feelings of
emotions, psychologists tell us, has to do with the
ineffability of their causes:

tho we usu know what has caused an outright emotion,
we often find ourselves in one or another mood without
knowing its source.

[Experiments] suggest that our world may be filled with
mood triggers that we fail to notice - -merely seeing a picture
of a happy face elicits fleeting activity in the muscles that pull
the mouth into a smile.

Edgar Allan Poe had an intuitive grasp of this
principle. He wrote: 'When I wish to find out how
good or how wicked anyone is, or what his thoughts
are at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face,
as accurately as possible, in accordance with the
expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts
or sentiments arise in my own mind or heart, as if
to match or correspond with the expression.' "

this is biology ... how do people in non-face-to-face settings
do it?

for Lisa ... "me too" in re "gut feeling" .
\
I've only met a a few people in real life from puter interface ... but my current best buddy met on BBS days .. 15 years ago lolol

Robin Dunbar, an
evolutionarypsychologist and social-
brain theorist, and others have
documented correlations between
brain size and social-group size in
many primate species. The bigger an
animal's typical group size (20 or so
for macaques, for instance, 50 or so for
chimps), the larger the percentage of
brain devoted to neocortex, the thin but
critical outer layer that accounts for
most of a primate's cognitive abilities.

In most mammals the neocortex
accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent
of brain volume. In the highly social
primates it occupies about 50 percent
to 65 percent. In humans, it's 80 ercent.

"[N]o such strong correlation exists
between neocortex size and tasks like
hunting, navigating, or creating shelter.
Understanding one another, it seems,
is our greatest cognitive challenge."

Answer 1

Excellent question.
I don't know how anyone else does it, but I tend to be very intuitive and just go with my gut feelings. I'm not wrong very often.