Expressions Trigger Emotions : Putting On a Happy Face: It Works, Researcher Says

Putting on a face, whether of fear, anger or amusement, triggers a genuine emotional reaction in the body, a University of California researcher reported Tuesday.

“We know that if you have an emotion, it shows on your face. Now we’ve shown it goes the other way too,” said Paul Ekman, a professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco. “You become what you put on your face.”

Ekman said his research, begun with actors--because they are skilled at making faces--and confirmed through tests of college students, may eventually prove useful in medicine, if a happy face can indeed produce a happy body. But it also “gives a clue on how to beat lie detectors,” he said.

Scientists have long been able to measure the effect of emotions on the body through tests of heart rate, muscle tension, skin temperature and respiration. It was always assumed, however, that it was the emotions that triggered the facial reactions.

By coaching students to move their facial muscles in certain ways, Ekman and his research team showed that their bodies also reacted as if the person were afraid, angry, disgusted or amused.

“It seems to be how we are wired up,” Ekman told fellow researchers at the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science meeting in Los Angeles. “If you laugh at suffering, you don’t feel suffering inside. If your face shows sorrow, you do feel it inside.”

Ekman said that he and his colleagues have linked facial expressions and a corresponding body reaction for seven emotions: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, amusement, surprise and contempt.

But he stopped short of the advising his listeners to “put on a happy face.”

“So far, our evidence is the weakest for the smile,” he said. “That may be because there are 18 kinds of smiles. You can smile in anger or have a sad smile.”

Other researchers working with Ekman reported that certain emotions register in “universal expressions” on the face. Anger or disgust, for example, is easily recognizable on the face of a person from another culture because these facial expressions appear to be inborn, they said.

‘Biological Architecture’

If a drop of lemon juice is put on the tongue of baby who is only 72 hours old, the infant’s face will show disgust, said Richard Davidson, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

“These facial changes for certain emotions are present from very early in life and could not have been learned,” Davidson said. “They are evidently part of our biological architecture.”

Still, most people have to be coached to put an expression on their face.

“We worked first with actors because this is their business,” Ekman said. “But then some people said, ‘It’s only actors, and they’re peculiar.’ So we had to repeat it with college freshmen.”

How do you show fear on your face, Ekman was asked.

“Raise your eyebrows, pull them together, tighten your low eyebrows and pull your jaw back,” he said. “It usually takes a couple of minutes to get the facial muscles into the right place.”

And what if you feign an expression?

System Reacts

“If you feign it and do a good job of it, your system reacts,” Ekman replied. “If you feign outrage and you do it well enough, pretty soon you’ll begin to feel outrage inside.”

Ekman, who authored the book, “Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics and Marriage,” commented afterward that his work with facial expressions shows how lie detector tests can be beaten.

These tests rely on subtle body reactions, and Ekman believes that learning to change your facial muscles can alter the responses the lie detectors pick up.

“The National Security Agency and the Department of Defense don’t like to talk about it, but lie detector tests are beaten regularly,” he said. “If they weren’t, how did we get so many spies in security jobs in the government? It would be interesting to know how many lie detector tests these people have passed during their careers.

“The Russians reportedly train people how to beat these tests. They’ve done a lot more work in this area than we have.”