Are Facial Expressions Universal? Essays

Science released an article entitled “Facial Expressions—Including Fear—May Not Be as Universal as We Thought”, written by Michael Pierce on October 17, 2016. In this article Pierce discusses how 50 years ago it was assumed that facial expressions were universal. However, it has been found that in the present day, this may not be the case. Expressions such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, or hunger, were all assumed to be expressed the same way as well as interpreted the same way. A study was conducted in the Trobriand Islands, were Trobrianders were shown as series of photos with facial expressions. They were asked to describe the emotions they interpreted from the photos, the results were intriguing. Pierce (2016) describes how

In 1924, Carney Landis set up an experiment to determine whether there is a common facial expression for each emotion that we experience. For example, is there a specific facial expression, used by everyone, for when we feel anger, fear etc? This became the aim of his work. At the time, Carney Landis was a graduate at the university of Minnesota thus the subjects of the experiment were mostly students (madsciencemuseum, 2011). There were 25 subjects in total; of that there were 12 women, 12 men and 1 boy aged 13 (Landis, 1924). Each person was taken into an experimental room and their faces were painted with black lines to allow Landis to clearly see the change in their expressions (madsciencemuseum, 2011). He photographed each change in expression as they reacted to each situation and he could refer to the black lines when analysing the photographs (madsciencemuseum, 2011). Apparatus was set up over 2 rooms; the first

Charles Darwin was the first scientist to ever study animals in a systematic way (Bekoff “The Emotional Lives” 6). In his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin discussed the

Officer Joseph Weekly sat on the sidewalk and wept as first responders rushed 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. A lot had gone wrong as Weekly and his Detroit Special Response Team went to round up a murder suspect on Detroit’s East Side. With the camera for the true-crime program The First 48 rolling, this team was under pressure to impress. They threw a flash-bang grenade into Aiyana’s home, kicked open unlocked doors, and Weekly fired as he entered the living room (LeDuff, n.p). The bullet hit Aiyana’s head and came out through her neck. She died immediately. The bigger crisis was that the team raided the wrong house. The video for J Cole’s song “Crooked Smile” replays this event. Cole dedicated it to Aiyana’s memory and used it to ask the police to reconsider their war on drugs (Carter, n.p). In trying to meet viewer’s expectations, Weekly’s team went against procedure and used a grenade to make an arrest. This need to impress others is what Cole handles in his song, and he insists that people remain special whether they appeal to others or not. He shows how society’s demand for perfection has contributed to women’s insecurities, low self-esteem and emotional imbalance, especially for black girls who not only have to struggle to attain such standards, but must also face racial bias, discrimination, and stereotyping.

His findings helped psychologist gain knowledge in how facial expressions play an important part in human interactions. His work helps doctors identify when patients are being deceitful and prevent them from harming themselves in the future. Today, Ekman continues to be an influential leader in the field of psychology. He has developed training programs to help people decipher people’s emotions, help people enhance their relationships with others and help people develop a sense of empathy for others. In addition to his work Ekman is an active consultant on emotional expression to judges, lawyers, government agencies such as the FBI and CIA.

The way a person is behaving is usually a good indicator of what they are trying to communicate, especially if they have difficulty expressing their feelings with words. Body language will also provide clues. People wish to be heard and validated and the way they behave may indicate how they are feeling. so a person presenting as angry may be feeling frustrated. People presenting as sad may be experiencing vivid memories of a past event that seems very real and current to

Christakis and Fowler suggest that emotions most likely began in early human evolutionary stages to promote the bonding of mother and child; later expanding to other family members, then non family members. The ability to read moods and pass them onto each other could have aided early humans in their everyday activities, due to the lack of fully developed verbal communication. It is also stated, emotions travel faster than words. It is faster to read an individual’s face to understand their emotions than it is to wait for the verbal communication that comes along with it; which leads into what the authors call Emotional

Thesis Statement: Body language expresses emotions and actions unconsciously and differs between men and women depending on their brain type, emotional experience and culture.

Case study or scenario – this was played out in class with one of my peers, I played Mr-Barhrami.

3. What is the evolutionary view of emotion as originally proposed by Darwin? What is the adaptive value of emotion? What evidence suggests

As most of us know, Charles Darwin is known as the father of the theory of evolution. Darwin not only advanced our understanding of nature in the fields of science and biology, he also made a huge contribution to the field of psychology in his book entitled “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”. In it he argued that organisms develop the ability to express emotion as an adaptation to enhance their skills at surviving (Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2014). In essence what Darwin was trying to explain is that emotions play a crucial role in our survival. Emotions allow us to feel love and compassion with the end result being reproduction. The emotion of fear urges us to avoid threats and danger. It is also the demonstration of these emotions that assist us in communicating our needs or intentions. As Darwin put it “...emotional displays serve the important function of informing other organisms about an individual’s internal state” (Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2014). For an example a rattlesnake in a state of anxiety will rattle its tail as a warning to tell others to retreat or he will strike. Charles Darwin’s evolutionary stand point on the expression of emotions is a thorough and multifaceted study.

This study was about all of our emotions and how they compare to different cultures. Paul Ekman and Friesen did this study to prove that emotions are the same across many cultures. They looked closely at the cultures that have been isolated from the Western and Eastern cultures. They chose the tribe South Fore, they are a group in New Guinea who have existed as a Stone Age Society. This tribe has had very minimal communication with the Western Culture and only see emotions from their own tribe people. Ekman and Friesen chose people from the Fore group that did not speak English or Pidgin, never worked as a Westerner, and never lived in the Western communities. They chose 189 adults and 130 children while also choosing 23 adults who had experienced what the Western society was all about. They presented these individuals with brief stories and three facial expressions to match with the stories. The participants had to choose the facial expression that fits best according to the story they just read. Ekman and Friesen discovered that there were no significant differences between the Fore group and the Westernized group. They both mainly chose the same emotions for each story. The children

Paul Ekman was influenced by Charles Darwin’s book titled, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, originally published in 1872. Charles Darwin used photos, drawings and body postures from animals and humans and compared them with facial expressions and emotions. For instance, a growling dog has many facial features similar to an angry human. “Darwin argued that the existence of these similarities demonstrates that emotional expression must have evolved through natural selection in the same way that other characteristics evolved. He further contended that the expressions must serve a function; they enhance survival of the organism”. (Reevy, G. 2010 Encyclopedia of Emotion (Vol. 2, pp. 410-411). I believe

Chapter 3 explores the concept of universally shared basic emotions, an idea that was first advanced as a theory by Charles Darwin. Paul Ekman and Jakk Panksepp studied the concept of

“Systematic research on the role of nonverbal behavior in social interaction has been common only in the past 20 to 25 years.”(Edinger and Patterson, 1983, p. 30).because that statement was published in 1983, it is apparent that the study of nonverbal behavior has been around for roughly 50 to 55 years. However, that is still a relatively recent amount of time compared to research in other science fields such as chemistry or biology. Despite the fact that this field is relatively recent there are many theories about our interaction with others. This paper will discuss the nonverbal expectancy theory along with two other theories, and describe how these theories can work together.