Invitation to Psychology

448 ChapTER 13 Emotion, Stress, and Health

an individual, also serve important functions:

appeasing others when you feel you have made

a fool of yourself, broken a moral rule, or vio­

lated a social norm (Dijk, de Jong, & Peters,

2009; Feinberg, Willer, & Keltner, 2012). And

the positive emotions of joy, love, laughter, and

playfulness do not appear to be simply self­

ish feelings of pleasure; their adaptive function

may be to help increase mental flexibility and

resilience, build bonds with others, stimulate

creativity, and reduce stress (Baas, De Dreu, &

Nijstad, 2008; Kok, Catalino, & Frederickson,

2008).

The components of emotion are physiological

changes in the face, brain, and body; cognitive

processes such as interpretations of events; action

tendencies that spur us to fight or flee, embrace or

withdraw; and subjective feelings. In turn, culture

and social context influence both the inner expe­

rience and the outward expression of emotion.

If we compare human emotions to a sculpture,

the biological capacity for emotion is the clay;

thoughts create its size, shape, and details; and

culture judges the result, placing some sculp­

tures front and center and relegating others to

the attic.

Emotion and the Body LO 13.2

Everywhere on the planet, people feel certain

basic emotions, including fear, anger, sadness,

joy, surprise, disgust, shame, embarrassment, and

contempt (Izard, 2007; Keltner & Buswell, 1997).

These emotions have distinctive physiological

patterns and corresponding facial expressions,

but they and others are also evoked by common

human experiences: All over the world, sadness

follows perception of loss, fear follows percep­

tion of threat and bodily harm, anger follows

perception of insult or injustice, and so forth

(Scherer, 1997).

Let’s begin with some findings from neuro­

scientists and others who are studying the biologi­

cal aspects of emotions: facial expressions, brain

regions and circuits, and the autonomic nervous

system.

The Face of Emotion. The most obvious place

to look for emotion is on the face, where emo­

tions are often visibly expressed. In 1872, Charles

Darwin argued that human facial expressions—

the smile, the frown, the grimace, the glare—are

as innate as the wing flutter of a frightened bird,

the purr of a contented cat, and the snarl of a

threatened wolf. Such expressions evolved, he

emotion A state of
arousal involving facial
and bodily changes,
brain activation, cogni-
tive appraisals, subjective
feelings, and tendencies
toward action.

said, because they allowed our ancestors to tell

at a glance the difference between a friendly

stranger and a hostile one, prepared our forbears

to respond to challenges in the environment, and

enabled them to communicate important infor­

mation to others.

Modern psychologists have supported Dar­

win’s ideas about the evolutionary functions of

emotion (Hess & Thibault, 2009; Shariff & Tracy,

2011). Years ago, Paul Ekman and his colleagues

gathered abundant evidence for the universal­

ity of the facial expressions of seven emotions:

anger, happiness, fear, surprise, disgust, sadness,

and contempt (Ekman, 2003; Ekman et al., 1987).

In every culture they studied—in Brazil, Chile,

Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy,

Japan, New Guinea, Scotland, Sumatra, Turkey,

and the United States—a large majority of people

recognized the emotional expressions portrayed

by those in other cultures (see Figure 13.1). Even

most members of isolated tribes who had never

watched a movie or read People magazine, such

as the Foré of New Guinea or the Minangkabau

of West Sumatra, could recognize the emotions

expressed in pictures of people who are entirely

foreign to them, and Westerners could recognize

theirs. Some researchers have added pride to the

list, arguing that its adaptive function is to moti­

vate people to achieve and excel, and thereby

to increase their attractiveness to others and to

their groups (Tracy & Robins, 2008; Williams &

DeSteno, 2009).

Simulate the Experiment Recognizing Facial

Expressions of Emotions at MyPsychLab

Ekman and his associates developed a coding

system to analyze and identify each of the nearly

80 muscles of the face, as well as the combinations

of muscles associated with each emotion (Ekman,

2003). When people try to hide their feelings and

display a false emotion, they generally use differ­

ent groups of muscles than they do for authentic

ones. If they try to pretend that they feel sad, only

15 percent manage to get the eyebrows, eyelids,

and forehead wrinkle exactly right, as they would

if they were expressing true grief spontaneously.

Authentic smiles last only 2 seconds; false smiles

may last 10 seconds or more (Ekman, Friesen, &

O’Sullivan, 1988).

The Functions of Facial Expressions. Inter­

estingly, facial expressions not only reflect our

internal feelings but also influence them. In the

process of facial feedback, the facial muscles send

messages to the brain about the basic emotion

facial feedback The
process by which the
facial muscles send mes-
sages to the brain about
the basic emotion being
expressed.