#trace making

This connection piqued my interest, and prompted me to investigate. Through my research I came across the concept of emotional traces, visual representations of one’s emotions that manifest through mannerisms, speech, breathing, or slight body movements. Emotions are consistently thought about as being mental concepts rather than overtly physical concepts, but once you look into the physiological make up of the human body you can start to realize that everything is connected. There are certain signs that the majority of people can pick up on regarding this topic, for example if someone is feeling nervous or anxious their speech might become timid or unsteady, they might start displaying more erratic movements like fidgeting or pacing. All of these things are subconscious, if you’re nervous you don’t actively choose to outwardly display it, this is the same way when experiencing other emotions.

This concept is mainly used in the field of criminal psychology, with a limited use in lower educational settings. The main goal of these fields is to enable the discovery of feelings and emotions that the subject may wish to keep hidden. I feel like this approach is limiting, as social creatures we have a constant desire to understand how and what another person is feeling. There’s is a negative connotation to the theory if you only consider it as a means to drag out hidden feelings which may be damning to the person in question, but if you view it as a means of coming to a greater understanding with a peer or peer group, a wide range of new possibilities present themselves.