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Recently, I watched one of my favorite movies, Apollo 13. As I watched I couldn't help but notice how many of the movie's suspenseful moments hinge on social cues, like facial expression and body language. While I get the emotional power of such moments, at times they confuse me.
Watching it, I am struck by what an amazing tool such a movie is in learning to understand emotion, and to gauge my own accuracy. Take the last few scenes of the film - as those on the ground wait tensely to learn the astronauts' fate. These scenes create emotion with layer upon layer of social cues - and it's interesting which ones I get, and which I don't.
It's there as the Lovells' daughter breaks down in tears. It's in the tension that seeps out in Marilyn Lovell, not as facial expression, but as a too-tight embrace - "Mommy, you're squishing me!" As time passes, it progresses to the Marilyn Lovell's face, tight with fear, eyes wide. Then Mary Haise subtly caresses her son, perhaps imagining what his life will be without a father.
Heads hang in mission control. Marilyn Lovell, beginning to realize perhaps her husband really isn't going to come back, turns away from the television. She can no longer look. Away at school, their son's eyes raise from his desk to the clock - does this silence mean his dad's really gone?
Then a crackle, and Jim Lovell's voice. The crowd goes wild!
All this adds up to an emotional apex that gets me every time - yet as I watch, I'm struck by how much I don't get. It not the more obvious emotions I miss, those that I can figure out intellectually, but the more nuanced emotions. What does that person's smile mean? Why is Marilyn Lovell looking back and forth at various people in the crowd? What exactly is that expression on Mary Haise's face?
I see Ed Harris, as Gene Kranz, pinch the bridge of his nose and surreptitiously swipe at his eyes...there's some relief there - but what else? Ironically, it's his supressed emotion that gets me most. But I don't have to wonder what it's about...
In the DVD version I have, there is a commentary by Ron Howard, in which he comments on the emotions and motivations of the characters. During the splashdown scene, he describes what Gene Kranz was really feeling. "There's an interview with Gene Kranz where he talks about this moment of splashdown, and 25 years later, he becomes so emotional that he can hardly talk about it. It's one of the most amazing things I've seen in a documentary." This was the impetus for Ed Harris' performance, and what he was hoping to capture. There you go.
In an additional commentary with the real Marilyn and Jim Lovell, they comment on what they during these events, and how successfully the actors captured what they felt. Marilyn's tension, attempts to control it, and final emotional crisis are confirmed when she says: "I believe at this point, the shell that I'd been inside all this time was about ready to crack."
Of the moment when she learned her husband had survived, she says, "I don't think I could ever in my life feel the elation I felt at that moment." Which is interesting, because it touches on something I find particularly strange. I find it much more difficult to read the mix of emotions that makes up the scenes of jubilation.
What's that about? Why are positive emotions beyond just plain happiness more difficult for me to read? Hard to know. Is it a survival thing? Is it that the ability to read negative feelings is more crucial for survival than the ability to read positive ones?
That makes sense to me...at least in the context of my life. Reading the signs of malice, for example, had for more value to me in avoiding bullies in life, than the ability to read happiness or elation. However, it has meant that I have missed joining in on some of the joyous things in life.
I confess that there are times when my only reaction to a happy person is discomfort and fear... I think, "What do I do? What's the appropriate reaction to this?" It doesn't come naturally. Inside, I know that I feel glad for them, but because I don't feel the infectious nature of it, I suspect my reaction is often more lackluster than one might want. I can't mirror it back in a typical sense.
If it is true that I, and perhaps others like me, have an asymmetrical understanding of positive and negative emotion, I find myself wondering - how does that affect our social networks? As Nicholas Christakis noted in his very interesting Ted Talk, being socially interconnected can be a strategic advantage (although conversely, the opposite can also be true). In social networks, emotions can be contagious - what happens if the only emotions you can consistently respond to and/or mirror are emotions like fear and sadness? That's a distinct disadvantage.
It explains a lot...
For much of my life, people told me interacting with me was "draining." Such statements always confused me. I wasn't taking anything away from them...and I was trying very hard to connect with them. If I wasn't doing anything to harm them, why should simply talking to me be "draining"?
What I've realized in later years, is that it all comes down to the expectation of reciprocity...the reason human beings show their feelings on their faces, rather than simply feeling them on the inside, is that we are meant to respond to those expressions. In some cases, such as in sympathy or joy, we're meant to mirror them back. To show we care about the other person's pain or happiness.
Failure to do this leaves a hole in the social interaction. The other person is left feeling as if they've made a deposit in the "emotional bank" of the relationship, without a reciprocal emotional gesture. It creates an asymmetrical relationship, thus the "emotional drain".
The sad thing, is that the feeling is not missing. More often than not, it's there. But it's the mechanics of reading emotion and expressing the appropriate social response that is confounding. What's the best way to fix that?
For me, improving in this area has meant systematically studying human interaction, much as I've described above. If I had to dissect the things that have helped me make the most progress in that study, it comes down to two things: a study of psychology, and a study of the performing arts.
TV and movies are tools that I've used throughout my life to study people. In real life, you can't "rewind" a social interaction that went bad. You can only rely on your own faulty memory. But, you can replay a movie or a TV show again and again, until you get it. You can ask others about their reading of why the characters are doing what they're doing, and why the characters react the way they react.
It's like a virtual laboratory of human interaction. One I've found very valuable. I find it amusing at times, when I think about it. It's an irony - that an industry in which altruism too often seems conspicuously absent could provide so much value, in such an unexpected way.
I wonder how Ron Howard would react if I told him his work helped an autistic woman to learn to be a better friend?
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