Emotion and the Body: A Detailed Analysis of Paul Ekman's Theories

This essay examines Paul Ekman's theory of emotion and facial expression, building upon Charles Darwin's foundational work. It explores Ekman's identification of six basic emotions and his Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which provides a method for comparing facial expressions. The essay discusses Ekman's research methodology, including the neurocultural theory, and its influence on the understanding of emotion across cultures. It highlights the limitations of previous studies and the time consumption and video-analysis system of FACS. The essay concludes by emphasizing Ekman's contributions to the field, particularly in the study of facial expressions and emotion recognition, while also acknowledging the ongoing use of alternative methods like electromyography (EMG) in research. The document is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib.

Running Head: EMOTION AND THE BODY- FACIAL EXPRESSION
Emotion and the Body- Facial Expression
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1EMOTION AND THE BODY- FACIAL EXPRESSION
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................3
References..................................................................................................................................4

2EMOTION AND THE BODY- FACIAL EXPRESSION
Introduction
The study relating the generation of emotion in human and its connection to facial
expression first started with Charles Darwin. In his work ‘The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals’ he has established the universality of the facial expression arising from the
primary emotion as being same and similar irrespective of the demographic location of the
place. This paper will show the theory of emotion as proposed by Paul Ekman that was based
on the theories proposed by Darwin. It will also include the scale invented by Ekman to
compare facial expression known as the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The paper
will focus on Ekman’s theory for measuring emotion through facial expression and their
recognition.
Discussion
Paul Ekman theory of emotion is based on the classical approach to identifying facial
expression as a response to similar or the same sentiment, and the result is universal across all
cultures. His study was based on the ability and the social influence behind lying where he
examines the condition in which people can identify an emotion with the help of facial
expression. Ekman listed out six types of basic emotions and a distinct pattern of expressions
such as ‘surprise, happiness, disgust, sadness, anger, fear and disgust’ (Ekman, 2017). This
was again seen to be based on Darwin’s study of the identification of emotion across various
cultures. These emotions were described as basic emotions by Ekman.
Darwin’s research was based on the neurocultural theory and the method involved
ranged from observing young children’s facial expression of emotion through face to the
observation of emotion in a conversation between two individual (Nunes, 2019). It was then
compared with the facial emotional expression of blind individuals as well as those suffering
from psychological or mental complications. The wide range provided massive data and was
compared to form the universality and establish the independence of emotion from cultural

3EMOTION AND THE BODY- FACIAL EXPRESSION
influences (Wood et al., 2016). Ekman based his research on the same scale as Darwin and
confirmed what he called basic emotions. The scientist working on facial expression and their
identification who worked on recognition of facial expression deviated from the classical
approach. Their difference lied in the research method and the measurement scale and the
inclusion of variables. But Ekman’s development of FACS basing the evaluation of the result
based on cognitive response (Tarnowski et al., 2017). Ekman’s method was criticized
because he adhered to and even added to the force-choice method, which narrows the result
and the variety of data to be produced.
Conclusion
The contribution of Ekman on the studies of facial expression and the recognition of
emotion is the discovery of various forms of a smile. It showed the limitation of previous
studies that categorized smiling in the positive emotion section. Though Ekman’s FACS
opened a massive scope in the field of research, the time consumption and video-analysis
system are two of its major pitfalls. The video-analysis, along with cognition stipulation, is
the cause that most research is still carried and completed with the use of electromyography
(EMG). It uses surface electrodes, which recognizes the change in the movement of facial
muscle accurately.

4EMOTION AND THE BODY- FACIAL EXPRESSION
References
Ekman, P. (2017). Facial expressions. The science of facial expression, 39-56.
Nunes, A. R. V. (2019). Deep Emotion Recognition through Upper Body Movements and
Facial Expression.
Tarnowski, P., Kolodziej, M., Majkowski, A., & Rak, R. J. (2017, June). Emotion recognition
using facial expressions. In ICCS (pp. 1175-1184).
Wood, A., Rychlowska, M., Korb, S., & Niedenthal, P. (2016). Fashioning the face:
sensorimotor simulation contributes to facial expression recognition. Trends in
cognitive sciences, 20(3), 227-240.