How Do We Sense An Atmosphere?

[hc4361]

Everybody can, to a greater or lesser degree. Walk in to a room and feel uncomfortable because there is a bad atmosphere or tension between the people already there, even if they are strangers.

Or we talk of 'vibes'. We get bad vibes from somebody - I can understand if the person is well known to us, but we get it from strangers, too.

Is it body language or is there really an atmosphere we pick up?

Can we really sense when somebody behind us is watching/staring/glaring?

[chrisgel]

Yes I believe we can. I have experienced these feelings many times and think that they are probably genetic remnants of our past when such abilities would have given us an advantage.

[themorrigan]

yes I beleive its a sixth sense some people can tap into this better than others. A good experiment is if you are people watching stare at someones back as they go by. Some will turn around immediately, some kind of look uncomfortable, and some total oblivious -they would have been the ones that got eaten by the sabre tooth tiger lol! I used to work in Real Estate and some houses felt lovely and homely while others felt really bad.

[AB Editor]

There's probably hundreds of signals which give of such an impression.

"Body language" might be one - but deviation from other social norms might be another sign. Equally you probably know that there is a narrative reason which could cause such an atmosphere.

Intuition is just your nervous system giving you information quicker than you can "think" about it!

[Canary42]

Well, vibes in this context (ignore the waffle from wiki about vibraphones) comes from slang for vibrations, so there's definitely something tangible to pick up.

Those of us of a certain age well remember "I'm picking up good vibrations, she's giving me excitations" from The Beach Boys.

[joko]

micro expressions that show on faces before the 'wearer' checks themselves, are often noticeable and show the true emotion.

the plastered on smile/grimace, the arms folded, the stiff body language, the silences

we read faces and unfortunately for some people their face is such that it looks like they are having an emotion that they are actually not - such as a down-turned mouth, frown, angled eyes, wrinkles etc and so they appear grumpy, angry, sad, emotional etc

i have known a couple of people who have had a very definite issue like this.

i have noticed it with actors too - the ones that always seem like they're about to cry, or smirk etc regardless of whats happening and sometimes i have found it hard to watch the show, as i am misinterpreting the emotion of the storyline and character.

nerves and shyness are also often perceived as rudeness

[aelmpvw]

unless you're in a library the silence can be a bit of a giveaway

[wildwood]

Humans are part of the great apes which communicate visually so any slight facial expression or body language is easy to pick up on, often subconsciously. There is no such thing as 'bad vibes'.

[anneasquith]

no one makes eye contact.