You Were Shocked, but Your Face Barely Moved (Darwin)

Why a real surprise can leave your face nearly still, and why Darwin expected the opposite. Charles Darwin explained the raised eyebrows of surprise in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Eight experiments by Reisenzein and colleagues (2006) found that most surprised adults felt it but rarely showed the classic face, while still believing they had. Follow an invented surprise party, try Darwin's eyebrow test, and learn why a still face isn't proof of a still mind. 📖 Book: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin (1872), Chapter XII, "Surprise, Astonishment, Fear, Horror". Free to read: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1227 Chapters 0:00 The Face On The Video 0:47 Darwin's Eyebrow Idea 1:52 A Photo Made With Electricity 2:56 What Experiments Found 4:39 Read The Person, Not The Brows Sources Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (first published 1872; local text: D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1899), ch. XII "Surprise, Astonishment, Fear, Horror". Project Gutenberg eBook 1227. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1227 Reisenzein, R., Bördgen, S., Holtbernd, T., and Matz, D. (2006). Evidence for strong dissociation between emotion and facial displays: The case of surprise. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(2), 295-315. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.... Durán, J. I., and Fernández-Dols, J.-M. (2021). Do emotions result in their predicted facial expressions? A meta-analysis of studies on the co-occurrence of expression and emotion. Emotion, 21(7), 1550-1569. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001015 Witkower, Z., Rule, N. O., and Tracy, J. L. (2023). Emotions do reliably co-occur with predicted facial signals: Comment on Durán and Fernández-Dols (2021). Emotion, 23(3), 903-907. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001162 Durán, J. I., and Fernández-Dols, J.-M. (2023). Basic emotions do not reliably co-occur with predicted facial expressions: Reply to Witkower et al. (2023). Emotion, 23(3), 908-910. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001227 Susskind, J. M., Lee, D. H., Cusi, A., Feiman, R., Grabski, W., and Anderson, A. K. (2008). Expressing fear enhances sensory acquisition. Nature Neuroscience, 11(7), 843-850. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2138 The surprise party, the friends, the phone video, the gift and the dialogue are original fiction. The laboratory findings describe adults in experiments and do not show that faces never express surprise. The asking suggestion is ordinary advice, not a tested method. 💬 When did someone read your face completely wrong? Headlore is psychology, told by stick figures. Subscribe for more:    / @headlore   For education, not medical advice. #psychology #surprise #charlesdarwin