The basic idea, according to Azim F. Shariff of the University of Oregon, is that the specific facial expressions associated with each particular emotion evolved for some reason<\/strong>. Shariff cowrote the paper with Jessica L. Tracy of the University of British Columbia. So fear helps respond to threat, and the squinched-up nose and mouth of disgust make it harder for you to inhale anything poisonous drifting on the breeze.<\/strong> The outthrust chest of pride increases both testosterone production and lung capacity so you\u2019re ready to take on anyone. Then, as social living became more important to the evolutionary success of certain species\u2014most notably humans\u2014the expressions evolved to serve a social role as well; so a happy face, for example, communicates a lack of threat and an ashamed face communicates your desire to appease.<\/strong><\/p>\n The research is based in part on work from the last several decades showing that some emotional expressions are universal<\/strong>\u2014even in remote areas with no exposure to Western media, people know what a scared face and a sad face look like, Shariff says. This type of evidence makes it unlikely that expressions were social constructs, invented in Western Europe, which then spread to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just across cultures, but across species. \u201cWe seem to share a number of similar expressions, including pride, with chimpanzees and other apes,\u201d Shariff says. This suggests that the expressions appeared first in a common ancestor.<\/p>\n The theory that emotional facial expressions evolved as a physiological part of the response to a particular situation has been somewhat controversial in psychology; another article in the same issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science <\/em>argues that the evidence on how emotions evolved is not conclusive.<\/p>\n Shariff and Tracy agree that more research is needed to support some of their claims, but that, \u201cA lot of what we\u2019re proposing here would not be all that controversial to other biologists,\u201d Shariff says. \u201cThe specific concepts of \u2018exaptation\u2019 and \u2018ritualization\u2019 that we discuss are quite common when discussing the evolution of non-human animals.\u201d For example, some male birds bring a tiny morsel of food to a female bird as part of an elaborate courtship display. In that case, something that might once have been biologically relevant\u2014sharing food with another bird\u2014has evolved over time into a signal of his excellence as a potential mate. In the same way, Shariff says, facial expressions that started as part of the body\u2019s response to a situation may have evolved into a social signal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: That cartoon scary face \u2013 wide eyes, ready to run \u2013 may have helped our primate ancestors survive in a dangerous wild,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[13,12,98],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Fear.jpg\" "\\"fear\\"")
That cartoon scary face \u2013 wide eyes, ready to run \u2013 may have helped our primate ancestors survive in a dangerous wild, according to the authors of an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors present a way that fear and other facial expressions might have evolved and then come to signal a person\u2019s feelings to the people around him.<\/p>\n