Some psychologists argue that this biological system has been co-opted by social versions of the same emotion, so that we make the same face when experiencing moral disgust. The emotional expression of disgust, for example-which includes wrinkling the nose and curling the upper lip-is thought to be rooted in the biological need to expel something harmful from the body. His work set off an ongoing controversy about the extent to which emotions are biologically or culturally constructed.Įkman subsequently identified six basic emotions that he argued have discrete biological functions. Ekman found that his subjects recognized the emotions in the photographs at a rate that exceeded chance, and he concluded that emotion has at least some universal element. In a series of groundbreaking studies, Ekman traveled to remote places such as Papua New Guinea and showed the local residents photographs of facial expressions, to ascertain whether emotions are universally human and based in evolution and biology.Įkman’s research was inspired in part by Charles Darwin, whose 1872 work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals argued that different species and cultures use the same facial expressions to show similar internal experiences. The study of emotion was pioneered in the 1960s by Paul Ekman, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who is now on the editorial board of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. This year, Mauss’s research on emotion earned her an award from the American Psychology Association for an early career contribution to psychology.Įven within psychology, emotions have long been considered “unscientific,” Mauss says. Mauss runs UC Berkeley’s Emotion and Emotion Regulation Lab, which is dedicated to studying how people try to shape emotions and their expression. We may want to alter how we feel, we may want to alter how we act, or we may want to alter the physiological aspects of emotion.” “Rather, we almost always-and one might argue always-try to do something with that emotion. “Humans don’t usually just have an emotion and go with it,” Mauss says. Yet according to Iris Mauss, Associate Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley, our feelings are rarely (if ever) entirely internal instead, they drive us toward external action, whether taking deep breaths to reduce stress or making a face. From “filled with happiness” to “boiling over with rage,” much of the language we use to describe emotions depicts them as internal forces, waiting to be unleashed.
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