Facial Expressions

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 expressions -The human face is extremely expressive, able to express countless emotions without saying a word. And unlike some forms of nonverbal communication, facial expressions are

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

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 .

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

In the article, “Why Women Smile,” Cunningham conveys how she believes smiles to be, “not the small and innocuous things they appear to be…” (172). Cunningham analyzes the various reasonings behind the smiling women throughout our history and the world. For example, she reports that the Japanese smile is often conveyed to hide sadness. This smile was often expressed in their history if a wife's husband was a samurai who died in battle. She notes that, “Women are expected to smile no matter where they line up on the social, cultural, or economic ladder” (174). Cunningham goes into further detail on the trademarked American smile. She discovers that social pressures on women to continually smile began with the advertising of smiling females. Eventually, this lead the smiling woman

Even newborn infants show social behaviours. They love to be touched, held, smiled at and cooed to. At as young an age as one month old, infants can be seen to experiment with their faces and expressions, and may even try to mimic adults’ facial gestures. Because their facial muscles are fully developed at birth, they can make many expressions – “Newborns can smile slightly, knit their brows, or appear to pout or cry, and if you give them something that tastes awful, they look disgusted” (4).

The perception of emotions is an important topic to study because the ability to discern emotions plays a critical role in an individual 's cognitive growth, their reasoning, behavior idiosyncrasies and the essential key of survival. Perception is the a central element to emotions, meaning that countless emotions that an individual faces occur directly upon the perception of intensely expressive to a certain stimuli. We are aware that our mood affects how we perceive the emotions of those in our surroundings and the environments we are in, but also age has a big impact as well.

The smile had become a standard in all advertisements by the 1800s. Cunningham gives an office scenario where a woman is asked to present a project she has been having trouble getting under control. Instead of shrieking she would respond with a very nervous smile. She also mentions the studies by psychologists, especially that of Paul Ekman. Dr. Ekman has identified 18 different types of smiles representing all the kinds of emotions. The Duchenne Smile, the smile that defines true happiness, is characterized by various micro expressions and the feelings can be understood through the eyes, which in the case of American women is not possible as their smile is not always or at all associated with their state of mind. The author talks about how being limited to one expression is like an orchestra with one instrument. Cunningham gives an office scenario where a woman is asked to present a project she has been having trouble getting under control. Instead of shrieking she would respond with a very nervous

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.

Most people are surprised to learn exactly how much information they communicated about themselves through their facial expressions. The intricacies of what one does with their the eyes, eyebrows, forehead, lips, tongue, teeth, and mouth while listening or talking combine to send some

Everywhere you go you see a smile; whether it is on a billboard or person they surround us. But how many of those are genuine smiles? In the essay Why Women Smile by Amy Cunningham it is stated that women are expected to smile at all times and often these smiles are artificial. What is in a smile? Could there be something in a smile’s physiology to help us better understand a person’s motives to smile? Possibly even health benefits. There is more behind a smile than a forced expression, smiles benefit us in several ways and they are real.

There are many definitions of what constitutes an adaptation and a great debate amongst many famous biologists and philosophers, each championing their own definition of adaptation. Historical definitions include the ‘design’ oriented approach of Williams, who claims

Paul Ekman was born in 1934 and at age 14 his mother committed suicide after suffering from severe bi-polar disorder. At that point, he decided he wanted to study facial expressions of emotion in order to assist other people before such tragic outcomes occurred. By the time he was 15, he had enrolled in University of Chicago and became interested in group therapy. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in 1954 and in 1958 he had earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Adelphi University. His Master’s thesis was about the study of facial expressions and body movement. From 1960 to 2004 he worked at the University of California and starting in 1963 he received continual research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health for 40 years to study nonverbal behavior.

When mom and dad smile with their baby, the baby smiles back. If mom or dad makes a sad face, the baby sees there is no joy in their face and will start to instinctively begin to frown. Even though that this pattern of happy and sad facial expressions are intuitive, it is also providing the baby with experience of how facial expressions are displaying playing happiness and sadness.