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Emotions: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Basic Emotions
Psychologist Paul Ekman found that some emotions, like happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust, show on faces in similar ways across cultures.
Key fact
A genuine smile crinkles the eyes as well as the mouth.
Why We Have Emotions
Emotions help us survive and connect. Fear prepares us to escape danger, disgust keeps us from bad food, and joy draws us to good things.
Key fact
Emotions often act faster than conscious thought.
Fight or Flight
When we feel threatened, adrenaline floods the body: the heart races, breathing speeds up, and muscles get ready to fight or run.
Key fact
Butterflies in your stomach are part of this response.
Naming Feelings
Putting feelings into words, like “I’m frustrated” rather than just “bad”, can help calm them. Psychologists call it affect labelling.
Key fact
A wider emotional vocabulary can help you manage feelings.
Catching Emotions
Emotions spread: we tend to mirror the faces and moods of the people around us. Laughter is especially catching.
Key fact
We’re about 30 times more likely to laugh with others than alone.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the skill of noticing, understanding and managing emotions, both your own and other people’s. It can be practised and improved.
Key fact
Empathy means understanding how someone else feels.
Mood & Body
Mood and body are linked. Hunger can make people irritable, and exercise releases chemicals that can lift your mood.
Key fact
“Hangry” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018.
Fun facts
Judo athletes blind from birth make the same faces of victory and defeat as sighted athletes.
In 1872, Charles Darwin wrote a whole book on emotions, comparing expressions in people and animals.
There’s a third response too: freezing. Many animals, and people, go still when suddenly frightened.
Brain scans show that naming a feeling calms the amygdala, the brain’s alarm centre.
Yawns are catching too, and not just between people: dogs often yawn after watching their owners do it.
The idea of emotional intelligence was made famous by Daniel Goleman’s 1995 bestseller.
Your gut holds hundreds of millions of nerve cells, which is why it’s sometimes called the “second brain”.
Story: The Doctor Who Wired Up Faces
The Doctor Who Wired Up Faces
1850s Paris. Doctor Guillaume Duchenne touches electrodes to people’s faces, making single muscles twitch into smiles, frowns and looks of terror.
He photographs every expression, one of the first uses of photography in science. His 1862 book maps which muscles make which emotion.
Charles Darwin borrowed his pictures for his own book on emotions. And a real, eye-crinkling smile still carries Duchenne’s name.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Some facial expressions are recognised across many cultures.
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True. Like smiles and frowns.
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Question 2 of 10
Fear can help us react to danger.
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True. It readies the body to act fast.
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Question 3 of 10
Adrenaline makes the heart beat faster.
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True. To pump more blood to the muscles.
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Question 4 of 10
Naming a feeling can help calm it.
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True. Putting it into words takes the edge off.
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Question 5 of 10
People often mirror the emotions of those around them.
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True. Moods can spread through a room.
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Question 6 of 10
Emotional intelligence can be improved with practice.
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True. Like any skill.
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Question 7 of 10
Hunger can make people more irritable.
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True. Low blood sugar can shorten tempers.
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Question 8 of 10
Every culture shows fear with completely different faces.
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False. Basic expressions are broadly shared.
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Question 9 of 10
Emotions serve no useful purpose.
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False. They guide what we approach and avoid.
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Question 10 of 10
Fight or flight switches your muscles off.
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False. It readies them to act.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Emotions has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Paul Ekman Group — Universal emotions
- Lieberman et al. (2007), affect labelling and the amygdala, Psychological Science
- Provine (2000), Laughter: A Scientific Investigation
- Coles et al. (2022), Many Labs facial feedback study, Nature Human Behaviour
- Oxford English Dictionary — “hangry” (added 2018)
- Wagenmakers et al. (2016), registered replication of the facial feedback hypothesis, Perspectives on Psychological Science 11
- Brooks (2014), get excited: reappraising anxiety, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143
