Basic emotions
The claim that a small set of emotions (usually anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise, sometimes contempt) are evolved, universal programs, each with a recognisable face, physiology and action tendency.
What drives it
Gives a fast first vocabulary for identification: each basic emotion comes with a typical urge (attack, escape, expel, withdraw, approach, orient). Useful as a rough map, dangerous as a lie detector.
How it shows
Work
The usual cues are real enough at the coarse level: tightened jaw and lowered brows in anger, widened eyes and a pulled-back posture in fear, nose wrinkle at a proposal in disgust. Context and the person's baseline matter more than any single face.
Relationships
Partners learn each other's idiosyncratic versions: one person's anger is a raised voice, another's is a flat, quiet 'fine'. The universal template often misreads people you know well.
Self
You can usually name the family (angry, scared, sad) faster than the precise feeling; the urge in the body (to strike, to leave, to cry) is the giveaway.
What tells it apart
Constructed emotion: Basic-emotion identification expects one face per emotion across people; if the same person shows anger with a smile in one meeting and a scowl in another, and you only get it right from context, you are seeing the constructed-emotion picture at work.
Emotional contagion: Recognising someone's fear means naming it in them; contagion is when your own pulse and face shift to match theirs before you have named anything.
A test
Before trusting your interpretation of someone's face, check it against their baseline and the situation, and ask what they would want to do right now; if face, context and urge do not line up, hold the label loosely.
Questions to carry
- Looking at the face, the situation and the urge together, how well do the three line up?
- When I last misread someone’s face, what was I expecting to see?
How strong the research is
mixed. Cross-cultural recognition of a few facial expressions is real but weaker than first claimed once forced-choice methods are removed, the Ekman versus Barrett debate over whether emotions are hard-wired kinds is unresolved, and identifying lies from 'micro-expressions' has weak support.
Where it comes from
Charles Darwin, 1872; Silvan Tomkins, 1962; Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, 1971; Ekman, 1992
On the family tree: Charles Darwin
Sources
- Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)
- Paul Ekman, An Argument for Basic Emotions (1992)
- Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)