Word: facially
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...Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper, David Matsumoto of San Francisco State University and Bob Willingham of the Center for Psychological Studies in Berkeley, Calif., present the results of the first study ever conducted comparing the facial expressions of blind people with those of sighted people in a natural, nonlaboratory setting. Those studied were all judo athletes - blind ones who competed in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens and sighted ones who competed in the 2004 Olympics in the same competition hall a few weeks earlier. (See pictures of "Second Place: Faces of Defeat...
Matsumoto conceived the paper to investigate one of the oldest dilemmas in the study of physiology. We have known for many years that people all over the world, even those from remote cultures, use the same facial expressions to convey basic emotions like grief or joy. Charles Darwin noted this phenomenon in the 19th century, and Matsumoto's mentor, a famous psychologist named Paul Ekman who traveled the globe in the 1960s, proved that both isolated tribesmen and urban Westerners identified pictures of facial expressions in the same way. Ekman demonstrated that a frown means unhappiness the world over; wide...
This question has occupied many scientists. Darwin wrote a long, highly entertaining 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, that came to the conclusion - unsurprising, given the author - that the universality of facial expressions owed to their evolutionary origin...
...concluding chapter, Darwin noted that a pastor who ran a school for the blind told him that "those born blind" and "those gifted with eyesight" display facial expressions equally well. But somehow it took more than 130 years for someone to test this hypothesis scientifically. Matsumoto has finally proved the hypothesis. He examined 123 photographs taken by Willingham, a professional photographer, and carefully coded all the expressions on the athletes' faces. The authors found that regardless of whether the athletes could see, the gold-medal winners were significantly more likely to display real, joyful smiles - those that engage not just...
Because blind people can't learn cultural cues from looking at others, Matsumoto and Willingham conclude that all of us are born with the ability to express both real and social emotions through our facial expressions. The fact that blind people display fake smiles shows that the skill is probably one we acquired through evolution in order to get along with others. (See pictures of facial yoga...