Emotions and facial expressions are two incredibly important aspects of human life. With a series of research done on feelings over the last years, several discoveries have been found that have led to significant real-world claims. For instance, the existence of micro-expressions and universality of facial expression. Therefore, emotions and facial expressions are an essential aspect in psychological novelty as presented by many types of research, which have also been documented by their efficiency.
There is universality in emotions and facial expressions. Paul Ekman (2014), in his video, suggests that human facial expressions are biologically innate, involuntary adaptive, and have phylogenetic similarities. According to Ekman (2014), early researches have proven facial expressions to be culture-specific. This aspect means that every culture has its way of facial expression as it has its form of verbal communication. Ekman’s claims have been seconded by Richmond, McCroskey & Payne (2011) in their demonstration of how facial expressions and emotions are dependably associated with certain expressive states.
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In their book, Richmond, McCroskey & Payne (2011) argues that “the first universality studies demonstrated a high agreement in judgments of emotions through cross-cultural expressions in both literate and illiterate people. Facial expressions have, therefore, replicated the universal recognition of emotions. Additionally, analysis of feelings in the face of non-verbal stimuli indicated a global emotion recognition (Ekman, 2014). Ekman further explains in the video how same facial reactions are produced when there is spontaneous enlacement of emotions. Such findings are impressive since they come from different researchers around the globe using diverse methodologies in with dissimilar people in different labs. These findings summarize seven the universal facial expressions of anger, disgust, contempt, sadness, joy, fear, and surprise.
Otherwise, there are biological and genetic sources of facial expression and emotions. For instance, when the facial expressions are spontaneously expressed, even the blind produce the same arousal. Ideally, facial expressions of the blind are more concordant with their relatives more than strangers, and some facial expressions of emotionally provoking stimuli are more concordant in monozygotic twin pairs than they are in dizygotic twins. According to Ekman (2014), some facial musculature that exists in human beings is always there in newborns even before they are born. Also, Ekman (2014) suggests that the facial expressions that have been considered to be universal to human have also exhibited themselves in other primates. This similarity can mean that adult human being may have the same emotional musculature as chimpanzees since emotions do not choose when and how to be present in a person and their families.
Emotions are known to last for a short time. According to Matsumoto & Hwang (2011), emotions take between 0.5 to 4 seconds and involves an entire face of an individual. Much shorter expressions occur when people are alone or with their families, or even with close friends. Emotions are relatively easy to note whether a person means to or not. Otherwise, some feelings can go off a person’s face very quickly such that if an individual is not careful, they may fail to realize.
The idea that Facial expressions exist and they inhibit a standard theory that suggests that human facial actions are involuntary and cannot be controlled by an individual. Else, when a person is in extreme emotional reaction, a need to control how they express the feeling is important, which might make someone appear to be deceitful about their emotional expressions.
References
Ekman, P. (2014, June 4). The Human Connection: Exploring Facial Expressions [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lISfh-Ip-qA&feature=youtu.be&list=PLkenMycjjjdbaeJj4EW6dqO3LIbPIfGPP
Matsumoto, D., & Hwang, H. S. (2011, May). Reading facial expressions of emotion. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/05/facial-expressions.aspx
Richmmond, V. P., McCroskey, J. C., & Payne, S. K. (1991). Nonverbal behavior in interpersonal relations (7th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
