In an article by Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience.com, she describes the findings of a new study that shows facial expressions are in genes.
By comparing the facial expressions from more than 4,800 photographs of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games, researchers were able to determine that sighted and sightless form the same “social smile” when faced with the same social context--in this case, winning a medal.
Social smiles use only the mouth muscles, while true smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise.
Both sighted and sightless athletes in the photographs used social smiles during the medal ceremonies.
"Losers pushed their lower lip up as if to control the emotion on their face, and many produced social smiles," said researcher David Matsumoto, a psychologist at San Francisco State University.
The athletes also exhibited the same expressions when exhibiting sadness, which Matsumoto says is shown by a downturned mouth and the raising of the inner eyebrows.
One idea behind the study had been that people worldwide learn how to match facial configurations with certain emotional states by watching others. Using photos of the blind athletes disproved this theory, as they could not watch others making faces.
"Individuals blind from birth could not have learned to control their emotions in this way through visual learning, so there must be another mechanism," Matsumoto said. "It could be that our emotions, and the systems to regulate them, are vestiges of our evolutionary ancestry. It's possible that in response to negative emotions, humans have developed a system that closes the mouth so that they are prevented from yelling, biting or throwing insults."
The study is published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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