Are you just being polite?
Evolutionary psychologists say finely tuned expressions may derive from our early ancestors’ need to communicate quickly, wordlessly. A grimace might say, “Run! There’s a dangerous creature here!”A nose wrinkled in disgust would signal, “Don’t eat this. It’s rotten!”
[When anthropologists] found that people in different ethnic groups all identified photographs of basic expressions in the same way, he began to suspect they were universal. Paul Ekman… found that with a genuine smile, the eyes crinkle when the orbicularis oculi muscles contract. If a person’s eyelids don’t move, he said, it’s likely they’re smiling out of politeness, not happiness.Not everyone believes in the universal system. East Asians score lower than Caucasians when identifying certain expressions. They often confuse fear with surprise, and anger with disgust. [A professor in Scotland’s] studies show that East Asians tend to get most of their emotional information from the eyes, which move similarly in those pairings.
Researchers [also] have trouble finding photographs that work as neutral expressions, she said, because we tend to attach emotions to them.
We hope you’re smiling genuinely today. Read more about the research on facial expressions and emotions at the Seattle Times.
