Abstract

Facial expressions are essential to human social communication. Their origins and functions, however, are topics of debate within evolutionary theories. Darwin suggested these expressions evolved from sensory-regulating facial movements. Building on this, we analyzed facial movements from two studies where Western and East Asian participants categorized facial animations by basic emotions and conversational messages (e.g., HAPPY or CONFUSED). Results showed that expansion facial movements, like raised eyebrows, predominantly signify high arousal and positive messages, whereas contraction movements, like squinting, typically indicate negative messages. Interestingly, these facial cues also influence spoken language perception; for example, expansive movements can pragmatically convey CONFIDENCE or EMPHASIS and can even be used to refer to LARGER quantities, while contractions suggest DOUBT or SMALLER amounts. Despite cross-cultural differences in emotion expression, these systematic expansion and contraction patterns remain consistent. Our findings indicate that these biologically-driven movements are foundational for the development of semantic and pragmatic facial signals that could have supported the early multimodal beginnings of language.

About the speaker

Jonas Nölle, Multimodal Social Interactions Group (MOSAIC), School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, UK

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