Facing Wilde; or, Emotion's Image

American Psychologist, 1993

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 1997

PROOFS FOR THE MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION Many of the results of the researches may lead towards a generality of the expressions. When we interpret the emotions experienced by other people, we tend to focus on the nonverbals, most important being the face. The facial expression is one of the most difficult to evaluate if there are not other appearances such as body position or movements of the body. THE IMPORTANCE OF PAUL EKMAN Paul Ekman researched the expression of the face while being in Papua New Guinee. Based on this studies, he diescovered the similarities between the emotions, and affirmed that there are several universal facial expressions. The unviersality of emotional expressions is being interpret in the social-biological categories. He used the envolvment of the facial muscles in participation of displaying the emotions, and the links with the automatic nervous system. During these researches, the participants were asked to employ several muscles to display the indicated emotion. When it was tryed to employ several muscles which were not accordingly to the given expression, then the automatic nervous system reacted by modyfying the temperature of the body and the heart rhythm. Also this helped to establish the quality of the emotions. To increase the changes of the autonomic nervous system, the participants were asked to imagine an event accordingly to the emotion provided. The information gathered indicated that the facial expression is essential and in fact is a basic factor which triggers the emotion and even influences the neurophysical conditins. Accordingly to those researches, there are 36 facial muscles involved form 80. These 36 muscles are engaged in most of the facial expressions. Most important of these muscles are frontal muscles, for frowning situated above the eyebrows, the muscles around the nose, around the eyes, the zygomatic muscles, those around the mouth, those of the quadrilateral lips, and those which are lowering the corners of the mouth. The expressive component allows to distinguish the emotions from other conditions but also to observe the difference between the emotions themselves.1 Accordingly to the above, the emotions may have proper indicators indifferent the culture. Accordingly to this, we may affirm that there are separate indicators of facial expressions such as fear, distress, anger, disgust and happyness. There are weak evidences regarding the versatility of the curiosity, contempt and shame. It must be emphasized that not always the experienced emotion has such distinct external displays, such as when recalling the events, the expression is rather weak, due to the processes of imagery and memory. The proper indicators of the given emotions does not appear alone. There are proper patterns that the indicator alone may reveal itself in many other emotions, but the model which consists in the configuration of the indicators has a proper specific. The phylogenetic development indicates the apparition and manifestation of different and even separated forms of facial expressions. Paul Ekman emphasized Darwin's statements regarding the development and functions of emotional expression and its versatility. Emotions are a part of our biological luggage. This form of expression which does not appears in the phylogenetic cycle, can't be treated as an universal form, proper to all humankind. Although there are signs regarding the outer influences of sepcific forms of facial expression, the basis is being provided mostly by the biological luggage.2

Throughout the history, the interest in ability of recognizing diverse facial movements did not disappear. Face conveys many clues about the complexity of personal emotional state, however , as much as a face can reveal, it can also hide and cover. In this article I explore the argument that facial expressions are reliable indicators of an ongoing emotional experience, and that their precise recognition can be used as a tool for improvement of social interactions and observations of psychotherapeutic sessions. In the next pages I will address the contraversal question wheter some facial expression are universal, and examine the power of cultural influence on facial behaviour. Discussions about social influence on facial expressivness have remained a subject of disputes in many scientific fields. There is no doubt that accurate interpretation of facial behavior requires extensive knowledge in many interdisciplinary fields as psychology, neurobiology and cultural anthropology.

It is not surprising that a word signifying a place, or point, where people or bodies meet is interface -literally that which is between faces. The underlying notion is basically that the face is the portal to identity and soul (Kappas 1997). Expressions such as "losing face" (Gesichtsverlust in German) or "facing something" (faire face in French) indicate that there is more to face than meets the eye. Much of the cortex of the brain is visual and there seem to be several locations that have sensitivity to faces (Kanwisher, McDermott, and Chun 1997). Infants are drawn to face-like visual arrays basically from birth, and they react with facial mimicry only hours thereafter (Olk and Kappas 2011).

Emotional Expression, 2016

2006

Interiority and Exteriority in Premodern, Modern, and Contemporary Thought, 2014

The human face: Measurement and meaning, 2003

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009

Faces are not simply blank canvases upon which facial expressions write their emotional messages. In fact, facial appearance and facial movement are both important social signalling systems in their own right. We here provide multiple lines of evidence for the notion that the social signals derived from facial appearance on the one hand and facial movement on the other interact in a complex manner, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes contradicting one another. Faces provide information on who a person is. Sex, age, ethnicity, personality and other characteristics that can define a person and the social group the person belongs to can all be derived from the face alone. The present article argues that faces interact with the perception of emotion expressions because this information informs a decoder's expectations regarding an expresser's probable emotional reactions. Facial appearance also interacts more directly with the interpretation of facial movement because some of the features that are used to derive personality or sex information are also features that closely resemble certain emotional expressions, thereby enhancing or diluting the perceived strength of particular expressions.