The face as a mirror
May. 2nd, 2003 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheHow Faces Mirror Emotion
In the 1970s, Ekman and his colleague, Wally Friesen, spent hours making faces while developing what they called the Facial Action Coding System, a compendium of facial expressions that can be used in research on everything from brain disease to love.
After making sad and angry faces, the two men discovered they felt awful. Later research confirmed that certain facial expressions induce emotional states.
A true smile -- one that raises the corners of the mouth and contracts the muscle around the eyes, known as orbicularis oculi -- activates the left temporal and anterior regions of the brain, the same areas that respond when people are happy. But smiling with just the lips, what Ekman calls a false smile, does not.
Researchers found that babies give true smiles to their mothers and false ones to strangers. Likewise, happily married couples greet one another with smiles that reach their eyes, while unhappily married couples use just the lips.
In the 1970s, Ekman and his colleague, Wally Friesen, spent hours making faces while developing what they called the Facial Action Coding System, a compendium of facial expressions that can be used in research on everything from brain disease to love.
After making sad and angry faces, the two men discovered they felt awful. Later research confirmed that certain facial expressions induce emotional states.
A true smile -- one that raises the corners of the mouth and contracts the muscle around the eyes, known as orbicularis oculi -- activates the left temporal and anterior regions of the brain, the same areas that respond when people are happy. But smiling with just the lips, what Ekman calls a false smile, does not.
Researchers found that babies give true smiles to their mothers and false ones to strangers. Likewise, happily married couples greet one another with smiles that reach their eyes, while unhappily married couples use just the lips.