Facial expressions - acquired or innate?

Are facial expressions acquired through social learning from infancy or are they an innate trait? Tracking the facial expressions of the blind from birth answers the question

Dr. Miriam Dishon-Berkowitz Galileo Magazine

Facial expressions allow people to show emotions and react effectively and quickly to the happenings around them. There are a limited number of universal facial expressions: for example, those expressing joy, sadness, anger or surprise (according to the studies, we will not be able to detect shame or disappointment in a person from Papua New Guinea).

Social learning or genetics?

A fascinating theoretical question is what is the origin of the universal facial expressions. According to one approach, facial expressions are acquired through social learning. All over the world, people learn from infancy to associate a given facial expression with a certain emotion through watching others, imitating others and with the help of positive and negative reinforcements.

According to a second approach, the source of the universality of facial expressions is genetic, that is, innate and not acquired. This source forms part of a system that reacts to situations in the environment, both in facial expressions and in cognitive and physiological reactions. For example, in a situation that provokes anger, the physiological system will respond by increasing the breathing rate and heart rate, the cognitive system will detect threats in the environment, and the face will assume a threatening expression such as baring teeth. The facial expressions of blind athletes who qualified for the final stage of a judo competition were compared to the facial expressions of sighted athletes who qualified for the same stage.

Until now, the theoretical question about the origin of the universal facial expressions: innate or learned, has hardly been investigated. One way to examine the issue is to study the facial expressions of people blind from birth.

Since people who are blind from birth cannot see the facial expressions of others from birth, they cannot learn to produce facial expressions through observation or imitation. Therefore, if it can be shown that people born blind produce the same facial expressions that sighted people produce in the same emotional situations, then this would be strong evidence that facial expressions are not learned, but innate: if blind people from different countries and cultures produce the same facial expressions in response to identical emotional situations, then there would be This is conclusive proof.
The athletes experiment

In an article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologist David Matsumoto and photographer Bob Willingham examined this issue.

Matsumoto and Willingham examined the facial expressions of blind athletes who qualified for the final stage of the judo competition of the Paralympic Games in Greece in 2004. The Paralympic Games are held a few weeks after the Olympic Games, in the same city and in the same facilities, and are intended for athletes with disabilities physical or perceptual.

Since these two events are considered the pinnacle of sporting competition, the Paralympic Games are a good comparison to the Olympic Games. Both occur once every four years, in the same place and almost at the same time. The same competition rules apply to both. For the most part, athletes who participate in the games are those who have dedicated most of their lives to the field, so winning or losing the games is an emotionally charged event for them.

The facial expressions of blind athletes who qualified for the finals were compared to the facial expressions of sighted athletes who qualified for the finals of the judo competition of the Olympic Games in Greece in 2004. Data about the sighted athletes were taken from a study on facial expressions that had already been published at the end of 200. In this study, expressions were photographed The faces of 6 athletes from 84 countries are visible immediately after the competition.

In judo at the Olympic and Paralympic Games there are seven categories of competition by weight; One competition for men and one competition for women. The competition lasts 7 days (3 in the Paralympic Games), and each day athletes (women and men separately) from the given weight category compete. The competition is held using the usual elimination method: the winners go through rounds of preliminary fights, quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals.

The winner of the gold medal is the athlete who won the final fight. The winner of the silver medal is the one who lost the final fight. Therefore, despite their victory, the silver medalists often feel feelings of sadness, loss and frustration because they lost the battle and missed the coveted gold medal. Two bronze medals are awarded to the two winners of two fights that took place between the two losers in the semi-finals, and the two competitors who won in the losers category (loser and competitor; loser and competitor). The losers of the bronze medal battle do not win a medal, but the winners go home with their spoils, so they are usually happier than the silver medalists.

From the analysis of the results of the study from 2006 it emerged that the faces of 86% of the watching athletes expressed emotions immediately at the end of the competition. Winners (gold and bronze medal winners) displayed smiles called Duchenne smiles. These smiles are expressed both in the muscles of the mouth, which pull the lips upwards, and in the muscles of the eyes, and they occur when people feel true joy or pleasure (hereafter, a Duchamp smile). These smiles differ from non-Duchenne smiles in which the eye muscles are not activated, and they occur when people smile out of necessity in a social situation, although they do not necessarily feel positive emotions such as joy.

In contrast, the athletes who were defeated in the competition, the winners of the silver medal and the losers of the bronze medal showed more sadness and contempt, or did not show any emotion (in this context, it is interesting to mention the expression of sadness on the face of the athlete Yael Arad when she won the silver medal in the judo competition at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992) .
Testing spontaneous facial expressions

76 blind athletes from 23 countries participated in the current study. At the end of the competitions, the photos of 39 athletes were examined: 11 gold medal winners, 8 silver medal winners, 12 bronze medal winners and 8 bronze medal losers. The athletes were divided into two research groups according to the type of blindness - from birth or not from birth (this information was collected from the athletes after the games).

The first question to be answered is whether there is a difference in the number of spontaneous facial expressions produced by athletes blind from birth, blind from birth and sighted athletes after winning or losing in judo. No difference was found between the two groups of blind athletes and between them and the group of sighted athletes in the number of facial expressions they produced after the competition. Although blind athletes moved their eyes and heads more times than sighted athletes, it is likely that they did so to orient themselves in space (eg, to maximize information received from senses such as hearing).

The relationship between facial expressions and emotions

If blind athletes produce the same number of facial expressions as sighted athletes, then the next question to examine is whether facial expressions produced by blind athletes are related to emotions. From the analysis of the data it becomes clear that the answer to this question is positive. Blind athletes produced facial expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, sadness, surprise, as well as different types of smiles: both smiles that indicate real joy (Duchenne smiles), and smiles that do not necessarily indicate joy (Non-Duchenne smiles).

The types and range of emotions expressed by the faces of the blind athletes were similar to those produced by sighted athletes in the same situations. In addition to that, it is interesting to note that no difference was found between athletes blind from birth and those who were not blind from birth. This indicates that the cause of blindness, as well as the time of its onset, do not affect the production of facial expressions.
The effect of winning and losing on facial expressions

If blind athletes produce in their facial expressions a range of emotions similar to that produced by sighted athletes, the third question that must be examined is whether the facial expressions of the blind athletes changed according to winning or losing a fight.

The analysis of the findings shows that after the victory, blind athletes wore different facial expressions than those they produced due to a loss. Furthermore, the facial expressions of the blind athletes were similar to the facial expressions produced by sighted athletes after winning or losing. These findings were observed in athletes (sighted and blind) from a wide variety of countries and cultures. From this we can conclude that blind people spontaneously produce the same facial expressions that sighted people produce.
The reaction to receiving the medal

The last question that was up for consideration in the present study is whether the facial expressions of blind athletes changed according to the type of medal they won (or did not win), and according to the context in which they were photographed: immediately after the fight, when it is more difficult to control emotions; Or about half an hour later with the distribution of the medals, when a little time has passed and you can control your facial expressions more.
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Most of the blind athletes who won a gold or bronze medal, produced a smile indicating genuine joy immediately after the battle (74%), when receiving the medal (97%), and at the end of the ceremony, when standing for a group photo on the podium (76%). These findings are similar to those obtained in a study on the group of sighted athletes.

The particularly interesting group is that of the silver medal winners, who missed an opportunity to win the coveted gold medal and are therefore supposed to feel sorrow and loss, rather than feelings of joy. Will these feelings be reflected in the facial expressions of the blind athletes? It turns out that it is. It turns out that none of the silver medal winners produced a Duchamp smile immediately after the fight. In contrast, 85% of them produced some kind of smile when they received the medal, and 54% of them smiled when they stepped on the podium. Similar findings were also obtained for the sighted athletes.

It is implied, therefore, that blind athletes, who were probably not completely happy when they lost the battle for the gold medal, nevertheless smiled a "social" smile during the medal ceremony. The fact that the blind athletes used a smile in particular and facial expressions in general according to the social context in which they were found, indicates that learning from observation is not necessary for humans to learn how to express emotions. However, it is possible that there are other mechanisms, unrelated to vision - such as reinforcement systems - through which people learn from infancy how and when to show emotions through facial expressions. This requires further research.

In conclusion, from the totality of the research findings, it became clear that the facial expressions displayed by sighted athletes and blind athletes in parallel emotional and social situations were the same. From this it can be concluded that the origin of the universal facial expressions is genetic or congenital.

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