Evolution Of Expressing Emotion Expressions: On Signals, And Spandrels

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

Facial Expression: The facial expression such as happiness, sadness, anger and fear helps a lot in conveying a message. These facial expressions are similar all over the world but non- verbal communication and behaviour varies hugely between the cultures in the world.Since the look on a person’s face is noticed , before we hear ,facial expression contributes a lot in a successfully non-verbal communication .

Emotions play an extremely important role in human mental life. Unlike the chimpanzee, human emotions are easier to read because of their physical responses such as tears in their eyes or their lips changing shape. In the same way as chimpanzees, humans use gestures to communicate with each other, yet they use words instead of sounds.

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

must mean that gestures come from our primate heritage. When humans, like primates are happy they smile or laugh, when they win they have a big grin on their face, and when we are excited about something we yell or jump on up and down. Chimpanzees have the same reaction because if you go the zoo you can see them on top of a tree in the corner which means that they want to be alone, just like us. When we, as a species get mad you can tell by our movement like face get tight, we cross our hands, our teeth clenches, we have a fist hand, and have a look in our eyes. Primates like monkeys and gorillas show the same thing because when they are mad they scream

In Amy Cuddy’s “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” Cuddy argues “... We tend to forget, though, the other audience that’s influenced by our nonverbals, and that’s ourselves. We are also influenced by our nonverbals, our thoughts and our feelings and our physiology.”

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.

The Chapter “Cultural Variation in Emotion” discusses the following questions. Are emotions universal? If they are universal, how does cultural and socialization affect the expression of emotions? The chapter goes on to talk about how different experimenters attempt to answer these questions. It also talk about how different researches differ on opinion of these questions. It attempts to answer the question by saying that”... it is clear that emotion-relevant faces are interpreted with some consistency across cultures, suggesting a universal link between facial position and at least some aspect or correlate of emotion. However, it is also apparent that variation exist both within and across societies in the extend of tis consistency. This suggests at minimum that cultural expertise and socialization play some roles in the attribution of emotional meaning to facial expressions.” The chapter then goes on to compare and constrict individualistic cultures and collectivistic cultures, and how these cultures experience and express emotions differently.

Are facial expressions of emotion culturally universal? This has been an ongoing debate since Darwin’s, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. He states that there is such a thing as a universality hypothesis, which claims, “all humans communicate six basic internal emotional states (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) using same facial movements by virtue of biological and evolutionary origins” (abstract). However, there have been disagreements concerning this theory.

The knowledge on when, where and how to express certain emotions is something that society and its members learn from an early age. It governs the words and actions that humans-as social creatures-use when interacting with others, however, these rules are under conscious and voluntary control. This concept is called ‘Display Rules’ and it has been deliberated and researched by multiple academics and psychologists, many with the intention of discovering the specific age range where this important rule is learnt. Investigation and exploration into this topic is vital as they are used in everyday social interactions, and ensure that undesirable reactions and emotions are sufficiently managed.

For centuries psychologists and scientists have debated whether there was a nurture versus nature aspect in how humans developed their ability to express emotion. A person’s capability to express emotion is thought to develop with your personality from birth to five years of age but others believe that a person’s genetic makeup forms your ability to show emotion. Scientists, especially neuroscientists study the relationship between the expression of emotion, neural

Roch-Levecq, A.-C. (2006). Production of basic emotions by children with congenital blindness: Evidence for the embodiment of theory of mind. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24(3),

Actors and normal people alike, have exploited the ability to display emotion through body movement for centuries. However, until not long ago, psychologists considered body movements only as displays of the intensity of emotions not their specificity. Instead, facial expressions were thought to be crucial for the judgement of emotions (Ekman, 1973). It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that research into biological motion illustrated that emotional state can be judged by body movement, even if only basic emotions such as anger or happiness. However, the evolutionary function of humans’ ability to express emotion was suggested a whole century earlier by Darwin (1872).

For animals facial expressions allow them to tell other animals how they are feeling or thinking. Wathan and her

Although the majority of cross-cultural research on emotion expression has examined facial expressions as the primary indicator, evidence of cultural differences has also been found in emotion expression through non-facial cues. For instance, Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, and Scott (2010) investigated whether emotions expressed through vocalization can be recognized across two disparate cultures: English and Himba (a culturally isolated Namibian group). Although their main finding focused on the universality of emotional vocalization, they found that some positive emotions were not recognized across cultures, implying that some vocalizations used to express emotions may be culturally specific. Regarding this result, Sauter (2010) has conducted subsequent research focusing on cultural specificity. She revealed that English participants paired smiling faces with vocalizations of amusement and achievement; on the other hand, Himba participants paired the smiling faces only with vocalizations of amusement. This result indicates that people from different cultures may use different vocalizations to express emotions and interpret them in different ways.