Charles Darwin b. 1809
English naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin
specifically described the facial expressions of six basic emotions and how
these expressions of emotion evolved from functional, survival actions of the
facial muscles. He believed that these had common origin, and fundamental
properties that are shared with other animals, and his detailed study of the
muscular actions involved in emotion were underpinned by three principles.
Darwin thought that there was a universality of human emotions with universal
expressions for sadness, happiness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. He also
saw the antitheses signal as telling (ie a tail wagging for happy or tucked and
rigid in fear). Darwin questioned why each expression is best suited for the
emotion it represents raising - and attempting to answer - the question of why
one expression, rather than another? He noticed that we may shut our eyes
momentarily and firmly, or shake our heads, if we see something disagreeable,
and how muscles in the face, such as his ‘grief muscle’ can line the forehead.
Read The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(1872) John Murray
