"My question is this: Zunshine notes that Woolf assumes that we will automatically read a character's body language as indicative of his thoughts and feelings because of our collective past history as readers. How do we know which readings are correct?"
A good question. The short answer is that we don't: Zunshine says explicitly that the fact that we have the ability to mind-read only means that we have the ability to attribute mental states to other people, not that we're right about our attributions.
The long answer is more complicated. These abilities are highly evolved, so they're more than just generalized learning and indeed more than just our "collective past history as readers." For example, look at this:
Which face is happier? According to M. Derec Bownds in _The Biology of Mind_, most people say that the face on the right is happier, despite the fact that they are mirror images. The reason for this, he says, is that the left hemisphere, which controls the right side of the face, is more active during happy emotions, while the right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the face, is more active during negative emotions. A smile on the right side of the face is more likely to be the product of genuine happiness. (This may be the reason for the mysteriousness of the Mona Lisa's smile; she is smiling with the left side of her face.)
If he's right about this, then it suggests that our intuitive feeling about which face is happier is in fact "right," at least for most people. We are hardwired with the equipment to pick up on a clue of this subtlety, process it, and presumably act upon it, without ever being conscious of what exactly we've picked up on or how. It's an impressive feat, I think. If, as seem likely, the ability to mind-read consists of lots and lots of different modules interpreting all kinds of subtle clues like this with this degree of accuracy, then humans have surprisingly good information about what other humans think.
Wes
6 comments:
I have to say that this is a mind-boggling topic. We are hard-wired as humans to pick up on subtleties, but can we always trust what we think we see? There have been times where I have misjudged body language, and therefore have "read" into something that obviously wasn't even there. Despite this fact, I still think (or truly want to believe) that some behaviors elicit a correct interpretation and thus a mind-reading of sorts. For instance, when a person is nervous he/she tends to be fidgety or play with something unknowingly. I would like to think that "common" behaviors which are connected to feelings/thoughts, such as happiness, sadness, anger, etc are "universal."
If these things are, in fact, universal and inherent in the hard-wired human brain, we may not be able to explain why we say a character is sad but we know for certain that he/she is because of this brain processes that we are unaware of. Although, the human mind can be faulty, it is still an amazing tool, which aides us in the "mind-reading" that helps us "deal" with people.
I agree with Jackie that it is nice to think there are certain common behaviors among humans that should lead to correct interpretations of body language, but I think it’s a bit idealistic. Readers cannot always trust what they see. I think a huge part of body language is learned; it is not always biologically wired in people’s brains. For example, if a girl sees her mother twirling her hair when she gets nervous, then she may also pick up this habit as a way to emulate this person whom she looks up to. But from an outside perspective, this act could not just be seen as nerves, but also as a way to flirt with someone, or as a sign of boredom. So, this could lead to different interpretations of a character’s thoughts and feelings because readers may have differing body language experiences. However, I don’t see this as a bad thing, and I don’t think there needs to be a “correct” reading of a character. If one person sees a character’s body language as nervousness and another person reads it as boredom, then it makes for a better discussion. They can look at it from both sides and see how each interpretation changes the overall meaning of the text.
When I looked at the faces, I thought that the face on the left was happier at first. According to an experiment based off of a study done by Rueckert (2005) in my cognitive psychology class, I will tend to think that not because of an ability to perceive subtleties of happiness on either of the face but because I am left-handed and a woman. This study along with another on split brain patients dealt more with lateralization of the brain and how specialized people's hemispheres can be. Right handed males tend to have a higher degree of specialization than women or left handed people. Therefore, right handed males' specialization of function on the left side of the brain might tell them that the right side is happier than the other whereas this effect will be less noticeable or even existent for people with less specialization of function.
On a more personal level, I was thinking about whether I actually use one side of my face more to express happiness and realized, at least for me, it was easier to smile on the right side of the face, So would that be the reason for my own intuition that the face on the left would make more sense to show happiness? Does that have anything to do with the fact that I’m left handed or a woman as the studies in my cogpsyc class suggested? And if it did could it go back to feminist criticism – women have an inherently different style of writing, and is this because their brains may be ‘hard-wired’ differently than men in the level of communication and specialization? Should we start a ‘left-handed criticism’ and study those authors who are left handed and determine whether their writing is different than right-handed people? That could potentially lead to an interesting debate since historically, left-handed people were forced to use their right hands. Perhaps this is getting slightly ridiculous, but I think the study of psychology (as Zunshine suggested) could definitely assist in helping to understand how and why people interpret in certain ways.
I think authors bank on the fact that their readers will not always be able to pick up on what a character means by a certain action in the text--Actors call the movements of the character a "block" I believe which is essentially the same for characters in a novel except the latter is on paper.
The ways in which we interpret these blocks can have more than one meaning which in some cases is what the author would like because it creates uncertainty or ambiguity. Zunshine gives the eample of Woolf's characters to illustrate this.
Just as in non-fictional life, we read people's expressions without knowing what they really think behind it. A person can express empathy and concern physically and be completely empty emotionally. FOr example, socoiopaths (yes, that's extreme but for this purpose it works) mimic and manufacture the emotions of people around them rather than actually having the capacity to feel any themselves.
But what is the truth of character's blocks and how do we know? We don't. We just have to go along for the ride.
Emily Franzen
I want to comment on what Michelle has suggested previously. I do not think what you are describing is ridiculous. Actually, it is quite legitimate. If there are so many studies that tell us that we can be "hard-wired" differently than others, then why wouldn't those differences come through in literature, and even interpretation? This really makes me want to do some research and delve into the differences between right-brained authors as compared to left-brained authors. I do not know how I would tackle that, but I think it would be quite interesting.
Psychology can be extra useful to the study of literature, in my opinion. For example, we always hear about how violent shows, movies, video games, and (some) literature negatively influences children. I would like to think that there is something in their brain that turns them on to that type of movie, game, etc and makes them react in the way that they do. Another thing that comes to mind: what about all the authors who were on drugs when they wrote? Isn't that the work of a difference side/part of the brain? Maybe that is an alteration of the hard-wiring...whatever it may be, it still disrupts the idea of universality in mind-reading. Who besides, say, Hunter S. Thompson would really 'get' Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without the same type of hard-wiring...altered or not? It is interesting to think about all the different ways the brain works and what it can produce.
And now I will cease to write because I know I have gone from somewhat coherent to straight babble.
For, I think the first time ever, I need to go with an authorial intention interpretation here. If we grossly miss-read character's emotional actions or intentions, it completely changes how the readers would interpret the text. It might be interesting to see how our miss-readings could influence the plot, but I think we need to acknowledge them as miss-readings. For example, we could read Gabriel's awkwardness with the maid that he had an affair with her. I really don't think this is correct, but it is interesting to see their relationship in that way.
There are certain stylistic ways most authors show emotions. Even if real people don't behave the way literary people behave, readers interpret the actions correctly because the reactions are socially engrained. It's like early films and presentational acting. Real people do not throw their hand to their forehead when they are distraught or bite their knuckle and scream when they are afraid, but we interpret these gestures correctly.
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