Facial Expressions: Learned or Innate?
David Matsumoto is a busy guy– San Francisco State psychology professor, director of their Culture and Emotion Research Lab, director of Humintell, LLC and judo coach and official. But he loves everything he does - he always seems to have a smile on his face.
When we heard about his study of facial expressions of blind athletes we wanted to learn more. I think the most interesting part is how the medal winners’ expressions were identical between the sighted and blind athletes. In every instance where the silver medalist had lost to the gold medalist, the silver medalists all showed a forced or “social” smile, not a real one. I just assumed that this was something we learned. Wrong!
As David says, biologically, we use smiles as regulators of expressions.
-Molly
