![]() ![]() For example, raising the eyebrows in surprise increases the field of vision, which may have helped our ancestors to escape ambushes by predators. “When bonobo chimpanzees are afraid they’ll expose their teeth and draw their lips back so that their gums are exposed,” says Zanna Clay, a primatologist at the University of Birmingham.ĭarwin believed that facial expressions are instinctive, having originally evolved to serve practical functions. In fact, though the felt smile may seem like the most natural today, some scientists think it may have evolved from an expression with a very different meaning. Which brings us to a question which has been baffling scientists for over a century, from Darwin to Freud: are our expressions instinctive and universal, or do they depend on the culture we’re born into? “In some places in the world, perceptions of genuine smiles don’t seem to depend on the presence of crow’s feet at all,” says Niedenthal. First the zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs at the corners of the mouth, then the orbicularis oculi, which surrounds the eye, pulls up the cheeks, leading to the characteristic ‘twinkling eyes’.īut there’s a twist. The smile is long and intense, though it involves the contraction of just two muscles. It’s since become known as the ‘felt’ or ‘Duchenne‘ smile and it’s associated with genuine feelings of pleasure and giddy happiness. The best way to study this, he decided, was to attach electrodes to a person’s face and jolt their muscles into action. Duchenne was interested in the mechanics of facial expressions, including how the muscles of the face contract to produce a smile. He was the son of a French pirate and had a penchant for electrocuting his patients – among other things, he was a founding father of electrotherapy. The first steps to decoding this multi-purpose expression came from the 19th Century neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne. More often than not, the universal symbol of happiness is used as a mask. But they can also be an effective way of manipulating others or distracting them from our true feelings. Many are polite gestures which demonstrate that we’re following the rules. “Some evolved to signal that we’re cooperative and non-threatening others have evolved to let people know, without aggression, that we are superior to them in this present interaction,” says Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While genuine, happy smiles exist as a reward for when we’ve done something helpful to our survival, the ‘non-enjoyment’ smiles are less about what you’re feeling inside and more about what you want to signal to others. ![]()
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