| Psych 156 Human Emotion |
[Feb. 16th, 2007|10:45 am] |
Ekman's six basic emotions
Ekman et al. (1972; see PIP p.146) suggests six emotions can be detected in faces:
1. Happiness.
2. Surprise.
3. Anger.
4. Sadness.
5. Fear.
6. Disgust/contempt.
Research evidence
* The research reviewed in Ekman et al. (1972) was mostly carried out in Western societies, and could have been culture biased.
* It was then replicated in 10 different cultures in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, and the USA and findings supported the initial research (Ekman et al., 1987; see PIP pp.146–147).
* This could be the effect of exposure to Western culture, but similar findings came from a non-industrialised group in Papua New Guinea (Ekman & Friesen, 1971; see PIP p.147).
* The research could be artificial as it is based only on posed facial expressions characteristic of particular emotions, omitting the autonomic activity and subjective feeling state that normally occur.
* Further research showed that voluntarily posed facial expressions do generate appropriate subjective feelings and autonomic changes, and so do have external validity (Levenson et al., 1990; see PIP p.147).
* Detection of emotions, apart from happiness, from spontaneous facial expression is difficult.
* Facial expressions are described differently by different cultural groups.
* There are more facial expressions for an emotion in a social group than when alone, which fits in with these expressions being useful in communication.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml for a quiz on detecting fake smiles
http://www.psypress.co.uk/pip/resources/slp/topic.asp?chapter=ch05&topic=ch05-sc-02 |
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