Emotion And Facial Expression

Neither emotion nor their expressions are concepts universally embraced by psychologists. The term "expression" implies the existence of something that is expressed. Some psychologists deny that there is really any specific organic state that corresponds to our naive ideas about human emotions; thus, its expression is a non sequitur. Other psychologists think that the behaviors referenced by the term "expression" are part of an organized emotional response, and thus, the term "expression" captures these behaviors' role less adequately than a reference to it as an aspect of the emotion reaction. Still other psychologists think that facial expressions have primarily a communicative function and convey something about intentions or internal state, and they find the connotation of the term "expression" useful. Some of these theoretical views are discussed briefly on the Theories of Emotion page. Regardless of approach, certain facial expressions are associated with particular human emotions. Research shows that people categorize emotion faces in a similar way across cultures, that similar facial expressions tend to occur in response to particular emotion eliciting events, and that people produce simulations of emotion faces that are characteristic of each specific emotion. Despite some unsettled theoretical implications of these findings, a consensus view is that in studies of human emotions, it is often useful to know what facial expressions correspond to each specific emotion.