Watching Angry People
by Saṃsāran
I sometimes watch YouTube videos of people fighting or losing it. I turn the sound down and pause it every so often to observe their facial expressions particularly the eyes. These angry people look like chimpanzees and gorillas in dominance displays. Careful examination of the eyes shows that often people who are behaving aggressively are afraid. You see it in their eyes. Their bodies say fight but their eyes say flight. Dogs and wolves do this too. Their fangs are bared and their back hairs standing up but their tails are tucked.
In fights you can gauge which combatant is likely to break and run and which is about to strike. A novice fighter will telegraph their blows with their eyes. Part of the reason for studying this behavior in humans is to avoid being caught up in it. You see we communicate with more than just words. An aggressive fighting display will send ripples of emotion through the watching crowd in the same way that a monkey troop will react to two males fighting for dominance or the way they will react when a predator is spotted in the bush.
Human behavior can only be understood by seeing it as animal behavior.
