Sometimes it's obvious what emotion a person is dealing with. Other times it's not. With just a little practice, you'll be able to recognize the emotions underlying other people's demeanor, words, and actions. And rather than getting sucked into a knee-jerk reaction to their abrupt tone, negativity, or finger-pointing tirade, you can get to the heart of the matter and extend a communication "bridge."

Why are our eyes so expressive? It started as a universal reaction to environmental stimuli, new research suggests, and evolved to communicate emotion.

In the 1990s, many of the equestrians I encountered believed that ani­mals were incapable of thought and emotion. “It’s all instinct,” one of my trainers told me whenever I brought up anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Some of the local ranchers insisted that, unlike dogs, horses weren’t smart enough to recognize their own names.

All animals have a culture and a language associated with that culture. Whether the language contains words or some other vocalization, all of these cultures will include body language. For example, horses are limited in vocabulary to a series of soft snickerings...

To get someone’s support, you need more than just facts. The most effective method is aligning communication about your cause with the most deeply-held values and aspirations of your friends, relatives, neighbors, and fellow citizens.

Standard advice about preparing for disasters focuses on building shelters and stockpiling things like food, water and batteries. But resilience - the ability to recover from shocks, including natural disasters - comes from our connections to others.

Many studies have shown that women's brains are wired differently from men's so they can both feel and recall both positive and negative emotions more strongly than men. But, just because women seem to be more comfortable in the emotional realm, does not mean that men don't, can't, or shouldn't thrive in it...

Most of us dread dealing with them, but call centres are hard to avoid as an increasingly ubiquitous aspect of modern life.

Politicians and policymakers are discussing what parts of the Affordable Care Act to change and what to keep. While most of us have little control over those discussions, there is one health care topic that we can control: what we talk about with our doctor.

We can start difficult conversations by speaking from the heart and sharing our wish for a world where everyone is safe and free.

The use of obscene or taboo language, or swearing as it’s more commonly known, is often seen as a sign that the speaker lacks vocabulary, cannot express themselves in a less offensive way, or even lacks intelligence.

Centuries ago, hearing voices in one’s head was thought to be a sign of communication with God – and if not that, then with the devil.

Doctors don’t just “get over” rude treatment from patients, research suggests. In simulations with an angry parent, the performance of pediatricians suffered dramatically.

There is a natural tendency to synchronize, to link up with others. When two violins are located in the same room and a string is plucked on the first one, the string tuned to the same frequency on the second violin will vibrate, thus sounding the note...

People worldwide love ????, except the French, who prefer ??, according to a new study of global emoji usage.

It’s that time of year – the season when parents, schools and retailers sell one of the most magical lies to children: Santa Claus. But far from being a harmless way to fire children’s imagination at Christmas, the “Santa lie”...

Donald Trump has just finished the last of his nine post-election “thank you tour” rallies. Why did he do them? And why is he planning further rallies after he becomes president?

What do you do when you get a gift you really don’t want? Do you frown and give the game away or do you feign enthusiasm? And is there a secret to buying the right gift?

Empathy guides us in the accurate understanding of situations and relationships. When we live with empathy, we realize that it is a kind of virtual reality: we put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, absorbing her experience...

Around this time of year, we all hear friends and acquaintances voicing dread about their upcoming family visits. From the sister-in-law who can't stop offering advice about how to raise your children to a father who has something negative to say about almost anything.

In recent weeks, the amount of online fake news that circulated during the final months of the presidential race is coming to light, a disturbing revelation that threatens to undermine the country’s democratic process.

“Post-truth” has been announced as the Oxford Dictionaries’ international word of the year. It is widely associated with US president-elect Donald Trump’s extravagantly untruthful assertions and the working-class people who voted for him nonetheless.

Put-downs are terms of disrespect, of ridicule and humiliation. I use the term shut-down for a form of communication that, instead of opening up a topic and encouraging debate and healthy conflict, shuts it off. Shut-downs may be overt but shut-downs can also be very subtle...