ABSTRACT
C. Darwin argues that human facial expressions are part of innate patterns of response evolved from behaviors that can see in other species. These behaviors are habitual responses or 'direct actions of the nervous system' that result from particular eliciting conditions. Over time, these became separated from the original cause and came to express emotional states. Neural processes in the recognition of emotional expressions are less well understood than those of their production. Experimental data and studies of brain-damaged patients suggest the right cerebral hemisphere is especially involved in the recognition of emotion in facial and vocal emotion. More fundamentally, the idea that facial behaviors express emotion in the sense of being a 'read-out' of emotional state, or an essential component of it, has been attacked. There is surprisingly little direct evidence that emotional experience and facial expression coincide. All agree that people can manage their facial behavior.
