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We may be able to tell someone鈥檚 heart rate at a glance, which could help us interpret their emotional state.

Alejandro Galvez-Pol at University College London and his colleagues showed 120 volunteers videos of two people positioned side-by-side. The heart rate of one of the individuals was shown on the screen, in the form of a square that changed colour from black to red with every heartbeat.

The participants were then asked to say who they thought the heartbeat belonged to. On average, they guessed correctly 58 per cent of the time, more than would be expected by chance.

Fatima Felisberti at Kingston University London says the findings are further evidence that humans have evolved to detect changes in blood flow in the faces of people we interact with 鈥� blushing being a classic example.

We know that people can tell their own heart rate to some degree, says Micah Allen at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Sweden, 鈥渂ut it is really quite curious and fascinating to see that we can actually discern this information about other people, just by perceiving their faces鈥�.

This ability may aid in our understanding of the actions or intentions of other people, Galvez-Pol鈥檚 team suggests.

鈥淚t could be that this ability to implicitly 鈥榬ead鈥� the heartbeats of other people from their face is something we evolved so that we can more easily align our beliefs and feelings with others, and also avoid being fooled by deception,鈥� says Allen.

One limitation is that the team didn鈥檛 test whether participants could detect a higher or lower heart rate without the help of an on-screen prompt. 鈥淚t is still a bit unclear precisely what information participants use to complete the task, but that is an interesting research question itself,鈥� says Allen.

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