Expression of Emotions

I found Darwin’s argument that human emotions are remnants of animal emotions to be very interesting.  After watching the video of how closely human facial expressions are to those of chimpanzees made this argument that much more fascinating.  There is still such a huge gap between emotions experienced by animals compared to those of humans that makes this theory a bit flimsy to me.  Although human emotions are on a much bigger spectrum, I could see how they may have originated from emotions necessary for survival.                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another thing I found to be intriguing was that human emotions are culturally universal.  Dr. Ekman observed that an isolated culture in Papua New guinea could reliably identify basic emotions in pictures of people from cultures which they were unfamiliar.  Through this universal expression of emotions, Dr. Ekman claims that one could determine if a person were lying.  He uses the faces microexpressions to reveal what a person may be attempting to conceal.  These microexpressions flash at a rate of .066 to .04 of a second and happen involuntary.  In essence, Dr.Ekman believes that the human face is a natural lie detector.  Although I am not sure of the reliability of Dr. Ekman’s methods,  this theory of human evolution has definitely spiked my interest in expression of emotion.