Paul Ekman, who was born in Washington DC in 1934, . Professor of psychology at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California (UCSF).
Ekman is known throughout the world as an expert in research on emotion and nonverbal communication and in particular for his studies on the expression of emotions and the corresponding physiological activity on the face.
His research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health for 46 years.
and contrary to some anthropologists, like Margaret Mead, Ekman found that most of the facial expressions and their corresponding emotions are culturally determined, but presumably of biological origin, as theorized by Charles Darwin. Ekman's theories are now universally accepted by the scientific world.
He developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to classify all possible human expression.
FACS
Friesen with his colleague during his early studies of human expressions and emotion, he made a map of all the facial muscles involved in the production of facial movements .

He then noted the presence of 46 units of the main motion, which is defined in the Facial Action Coding System.
Of these, 32 are 'action units', which are associated with specific muscles, while 14 are 'action descriptors' or movements are more complex, however, are coordinated.
Today is the standard used for the categorization of physical expressions of emotions and is useful both to psychologists than to youth.
Ekman's theory is based on an experiment analysis and cross-cultural comparison. In this experiment
scientific rigor was applied to a previous research documented in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Darwin, 1872).
Following a number of criteria previously established, were selected six photographs, each associated with a specific emotional expression.
Emotions are selected from Ekman:
Happiness Surprise Disgust
Anger Fear Sadness
The experiment was then conducted from 21 study groups, each in a different state.
Of these, only 11 states were of Western culture.
Each of the six photos were shown to people and they had to associate the photo of the face to one of six emotions (of course translated into their language).
The result was that:
In all the 21 people have been uniquely associated with happiness, sadness and disgust.
In 20 out of 21 states had a majority also agreed on the surprise.
In 19 out of 21 states the majority were in agreement on fear.
In 18 out of 21 states the majority were in agreement on rabies.
In all cases where there was no correlation, however, found the answer choice is the same for all the others who did not agree, forming in fact only two possible alternatives.
Although the research does not exclude the possibility that there are other emotions are universally recognized, from a base of 6 still seems a good reference.
We can then conclude that the facial expressions that show certain feelings are universal regardless of cultural background. In fact, although the physiological differences of men to cover a small percentage of the face is composed of the same number of facial muscles. That is why the expressions are the same.
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