Abstract
The belief that facial activity is linked to emotional states has a long history in science and in popular belief. In particular, the 1872 publication of Charles Darwin’s book The expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872/1998) has had a major impact on the role of emotional expressions in modern emotion research and has largely reinforced the commonly held belief that there is a link between emotions and expressive behavior. Milestone research, particularly by Paul Ekman and his colleagues, has cemented the common notion that faces express emotions. However, all of the involved researchers, including Darwin and Ekman, have usually maintained a view that is far more differentiated than the distilled version that has resulted from repeated summarizing and synthesizing in the secondary and tertiary literature. In fact, no current researcher holds that all emotions are always reflected in facial or other nonverbal activity. Inversely, almost all theorists will concur that often times facial expressions are not associated with a concordant affective state, or for that matter, any affective state at all.
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Kappas, A. (2003). What Facial Activity Can and Cannot Tell us About Emotions. In: Katsikitis, M. (eds) The Human Face. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1063-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1063-5_11
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