Face Off on Recognition

Intuitively, I have observed and known, you have to be able to appreciate your own worth and abilities first in order to recognize and appreciate someone else. So this means what motivates you will affect how you motivate others.

Recent research in the Human Motivation & Affective Neuroscience (HuMAN) Lab indicates that implicit motives enhance individual’s ability to recognize facial expressions of emotions in others. This skill is viewed as a critical component of emotional intelligence.

So how good are you at recognizing emotions in others? If you’re good at it you will likely be a great giver of recognition to others.

The psychologists and researchers at the HuMAN Lab out of Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany took a scientific angle on facial expressions and examined whether a person’s implicit motivational needs or style (what motivates them internally) actually influences their perceptions of the reward or punishment value of facial expressions of emotion, known by the acronym of FEEs (e.g., joy, anger, or surprise)?

How you feel about yourself affects how you view the non-verbal communications shown towards you.

Apparently, these FEEs tend to parallel a person’s implicit motives. We are born with the ability and can also learn to recognize these facial expressions. These non-verbal signals can communicate a sender's superiority (e.g., anger, smiling) or powerlessness (e.g., fear, surprise) in relation to a perceiver or another person.

It seems the type of facial expression displayed triggers a more prominent reaction depending on your internal motivation – power-motivated or affiliation-motivated.

This might explain why some senior leaders (possibly who are power-motivated) have a harder time in expressing positive feedback to employees (some of whom will be affiliation-motivated).

It’s all in the face and how you look at people!