Great thinkers since Aristotle have wondered how many universal emotions can express the human being. Now, by analyzing the face, scientists are close to an answer.
Researchers at the University of Ohio have found 21 different facial expressions, even complex and contradictory expressions such as "sad-angry or happy-disgusted"
Whatever you're feeling right now, your emotions can be known, even briefly, as your facial muscles contract, your mouth smiles or grimaces, your eyes widen or narrow, and your forehead contracts or expands.
Psychologists have long thought that these complex emotions are made up of more universal ones..
In the 4th century BC, Aristotle stated that there were 14 irreducible emotions: anger, calm, friendship, enmity, fear, trust, shame, shame, indignation, envy, emulation, contempt and sadness.
Like many of Aristotle's ideas, this description persisted until the Middle Ages, when intellectuals began to think that perhaps Aristotle did not always have the last word. It was the time of the scientific revolution in Europe, whose emphasis on experimentation and analysis inspired the 19th century neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne to experiment with electrified wires in people's faces.
As expected, the result of the spasms produced by electricity produced a variety of grotesque gestures that Duchenne called "Gymnastics of the soul". They found that different people tended to use the same muscles to produce the same facial expressions. Using the new camera, Duchenne cataloged these expressions in the 1962 book "The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy", one of the first books that had photographs. According to Duchenne, the facial muscles were designed to express even the most fleeting expressions, speaking a language that is "Universal and immutable".
Duchenne's work greatly influenced the investigation of Charles Darwin about the facial expressions and emotions. In his 1872 book "Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals", Another of the first books with photographs, Darwin proposed that actually using facial expressions to communicate emotions is a evolutionary advantage and hypothesized that some facial expressions and their corresponding emotions were universal in humans and animals.
Darwin was also one of the first to propose the hypothesis of facial feedback. This hypothesis suggests that, for example, if you put on a happy face, you will begin to feel that emotion..
In the twentieth century, the American psychologist Paul Ekman expanded Darwin's theories on emotion, measuring and coding different facial expressions in different cultures. In 1978, Dr. Ekman, developed a taxonomy of facial expressions. The Ekman system measures the movements of the 42 facial muscles, like those of the head, eyes and tongue.
Ekman found 6 universal facial expressions for all human beings, from African tribes to Americans: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.
Although it has been believed that there are only six basic emotions, the Ohio University researcher, Aleix Martinez, I thought there was more. This teacher comments "Six seems like a small number given the great possibilities of feeling and expressing emotions".
To investigate this topic, the researcher recruited 230 volunteers who had photos of their faces taken. Each photograph was taken after showing scenarios that provoked the different emotions (for example, a photo that disgusted or provoked fear).
After 5000 different photos of faces, the team used a computer to analyze facial muscles. This technique revealed that there are 21 complex and distinct emotions that are common to all human beings.
These are: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, happiness-surprise, happiness-disgust, sadness-fear, sadness-anger, sadness-surprise, sadness-disgust, fear-anger, fear-surprise, fear-disgust , anger-surprise, anger-disgust, disgust-surprise, horror, hatred and amazement.
This research represents a great change since until now it was believed that Ekman's theory that there are only 6 facial expressions was true.
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