Lay presentations of research on emotions often make two claims. First, they assert that all humans develop the same set of core emotions. This claim is called the “basic emotion approach” (Ekman, 1992). Second, they assert that each emotion produces a facial expression that is quickly recognized by others. This claim is known as the “common view” of facial expressions (Barrett et al., 2019).

These two claims taken together motivated emotion researchers to exhume the age-old “nature versus nurture” dichotomy. In this case, researchers ask: is the development of facial expressions the result of observational learning or of innate biological processes? (For critiques of the innateness concept, see Griffiths, 2002 and Lehrman, 1953.)

Researchers have addressed the learning-innate question by comparing the facial movements of congenitally blind people (i.e., totally blind since birth) with those of sighted people. Congenitally blind people cannot observe others’ facial expressions. Thus, if researchers find similarities between the blind and sighted groups, they point to inborn biological processes as the best explanation.

But some question the validity of the basic emotion approach. They believe that the scientific evidence fails to support the claim that facial expressions have a close correspondence to specific emotions (Barrett et al., 2019).

Charles Darwin (1872) conducted the first detailed investigation of emotions in his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin believed that our evolutionary history explained why humans showed facial expressions of emotion (Barrett, 2011). His evolutionary perspective inspired later researchers. One of these researchers was Paul Ekman, who currently is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Beginning in the 1960s, Ekman and his colleagues investigated the ability of people from various cultures around the world to produce and recognize facial expressions (Ekman, 1992, 1993). Their research results formed the basis for Ekman’s "basic emotion” approach, which assumes that:

Ekman focused on the emotions of anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise, and (sometimes) contempt. His results often are interpreted as supporting the common view—that all humans produce and recognize the same facial expressions.

But Ekman understood that facial expressions show more variability than suggested by the common view. He posited that each basic emotion represents a “family” of similar emotional states that produce closely related patterns of facial movements (Ekman, 1992). For example, the “anger family” produces more than 60 facial expressions that share a "core" of muscle movements.

Other researchers, however, argue that we must reject the view that specific emotions reliably produce specific facial movements. One of these researchers is Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. In a 2019 review, Barrett and her colleagues stated that, although it is true that “people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, more than what would be expected by chance,” the correspondence between these facial movements and emotions often is minimal (Barrett et al., 2019, p. 1).

For example, scowling, which supposedly is typical in facial expressions of anger, occurs only about 35% of the time in angry people (Barrett, 2022). And people who do not feel angry may scowl “when they are concentrating or when they have gas.”

Barrett et al. (2019) concluded that, overall, the available evidence contradicts “the common view that smiles, scowls, frowns, and the like, are reliable and specific ‘expressions of emotion’” (p. 1). Thus, they advised emotion researchers to simply describe facial movements (e.g., a smile), not assign emotion labels to them (e.g., happiness).

In 2018, Valenti and her colleagues published a review of 21 studies of congenitally blind and sighted people. Researchers observed spontaneous (unposed) patterns of facial movements. The studies varied widely in methodology, participant characteristics, sample sizes, etc. Nevertheless, 70% of the studies showed that the facial movements of congenitally blind and sighted people were similar. Based on this finding, Valenti et al. (2018) concluded that the initial development of facial movements depends on species-typical biological processes.

In some of the reviewed studies, researchers asked participants to act out various facial expressions. Overall, the results showed that, compared to sighted people, congenitally blind people were less successful at voluntarily producing realistic facial expressions. The ability to voluntarily produce facial expressions seems to depend on observational learning and imitation.

The reduced ability of congenitally blind people to act out facial expressions could negatively impact their social interactions. The reason is that people sometimes need to mask negative emotional reactions by voluntarily producing a positive facial expression. For example, children learn to mask their disappointment when they receive socks and underwear for their birthday.

According to the review by Valenti et al. (2018), congenitally blind children are less able to mask negative facial expressions. Thus, they may receive social-skills training to help them learn to produce socially appropriate facial expressions.

Jenny Kasl, a Braille instructor at the Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix, Arizona, discussed with me her memories of her childhood training, which began when she was about six years old:

I learned about pretending to be happy with something in order to be polite. Since a smile represents happiness, I need to produce a fake one. However, I have to work harder to produce this fake smile.

The ability to control her facial expressions still requires constant vigilance:

Even as an adult, I have to be careful what facial expressions I make.

I’ve had my mom ask “Why are you frowning?”, and I didn’t realize I was doing so.

Jenny thinks that congenitally blind children should receive intensive training to voluntarily control their facial expressions. However, facial expressions are only one aspect of the nonverbal communication of emotions. In future posts, I will discuss other ways that blind people produce and recognize emotional expressions.

References

Barrett, L. F. (2011). Was Darwin wrong about emotional expressions?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(6), 400-406. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411429125

Barrett, L. F. (2022). Facial expressions do not reveal emotions. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/darwin-was-wrong-your-facial-expressions-do-not-reveal-your-emotions/

Barrett, L. F., Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, A. M., & Pollak, S. D. (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20(1), 1-68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100619832930

Darwin, C. R. 1872. The expression of the emotions in man and animals. In J. van Wyhe (Ed.), The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. https://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F1142&pageseq=1#:~:text=Darwin%2C%20C.%20R.%201872.,.uk/content/contentblock?

Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6(3/4), 169-200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208411068

Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist, 48(4), 384-392. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.48.4.384

Griffiths, P. E. (2002). What is innateness?. The Monist, 85(1), 70-85. https://doi.org/10.5840/monist20028518

Lehrman, D. S. (1953). A critique of Konrad Lorenz's theory of instinctive behavior. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 28(4), 337-363. https://doi.org/10.1086/399858

Valente, D., Theurel, A., & Gentaz, E. (2018). The role of visual experience in the production of emotional facial expressions by blind people: A review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(2), 483-497. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1338-0

© Psychology Today