Researchers take a novel approach to interpreting expressions of emotion
Grimaces, scowls and doting gazes of ancient human sculptures indicate that there are universal facial expressions that signal the same emotions across cultures, researchers argue.
Faces depicted in sculptures crafted between 3,500 and 600 years ago in Mexico and Central America convey five varieties of emotion to Westerners today, say computational neuroscientist Alan Cowen and psychologist Dacher Keltner, both of the University of California, Berkeley. Present-day folks, and likely members of ancient American societies as well, anticipate that each of these emotional expressions occurs in particular social situations, the scientists report August 19 in Science Advances.1
- 1. As participants in the new study predicted just by looking at the faces of sculpted individuals, pain expressions characterized sculptures of people being tortured, expressions combining determination and strain accompanied heavy lifting, angry faces occurred in combat, elated expressions appeared in people being held or embraced and sad faces typified individuals in defeat. That link between ancient and modern groups “provides strong support for universality and genetic origins of these [particular] emotion expressions,” says psychologist Jessica Tracy of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
A.S. Cowen and D. Keltner. Universal facial expressions uncovered in art of the ancient Americas: A computational approach. Science Advances. Published online August 19, 2020. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abb1005.
Central to the study of emotion is evidence concerning its universality, particularly the degree to which emotional expressions are similar across cultures. Here, we present an approach to studying the universality of emotional expression that rules out cultural contact and circumvents potential biases in survey-based methods: A computational analysis of apparent facial expressions portrayed in artwork created by members of cultures isolated from Western civilization. Using data-driven methods, we find that facial expressions depicted in 63 sculptures from the ancient Americas tend to accord with Western expectations for emotions that unfold in specific social contexts. Ancient American sculptures tend to portray at least five facial expressions in contexts predicted by Westerners, including “pain” in torture, “determination”/“strain” in heavy lifting, “anger” in combat, “elation” in social touch, and “sadness” in defeat-supporting the universality of these expressions.
