Smiles Are Innate, Not Learned

Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer, LiveScience.com

From sneers to full-blown smiles, our facial expressions

are hardwired into our genes, suggests a new study.

The researchers compared the facial expressions from

more than 4,800 photographs of sighted and blind judo

athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic

Games.

The analyses showed sighted and blind individuals

modified their expressions of emotion in the same way in

accordance with the social context. For example, in the

Paralympics, the athletes competed in a series of

elimination rounds so that the final round of two athletes

ended in the winner taking home a gold medal while the

loser got a silver medal.

The blind silver medalists who lost their final matches

tended to produce "social smiles" during the medal

ceremonies. Social smiles use only the mouth muscles.

True smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes

to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise.

The researchers say sighted athletes who lost their final

rounds also showed social smiles.

"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 painted anger, sadness and disgust on

their faces in a similar fashion. "When a blind and a

sighted athlete show sadness the same facial muscles

are firing," Matsumoto told LiveScience, adding that

sadness is depicted with a downturned mouth and the

raising of the inner eyebrows.

One idea on expressions had been that people worldwide

learn how to match facial configurations with certain

emotional states by watching others.

The new study, which will be published in the January

2009 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, suggests that's not the case, since blind

individuals would be unable to carry out such 

observational learning.

"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."

Matsumoto was involved in a past study using the same

data collection, which revealed blind and sighted athletes

show similar gestures of pride (head tilted up and puffed-

out chest). Both studies suggest an innate ability to

express certain emotions with gestures and facial

expressions.

·           Culture Affects How We Read Faces 

·           10 Things You Didn't Know About You 

·           Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind 

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