''The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'' is
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
's third major work of evolutionary theory, following ''
On the Origin of Species
''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'' (1859) and ''
The Descent of Man'' (1871). Initially intended as a chapter in ''The Descent of Man'', ''The Expression'' grew in length and was published separately in 1872. This book concerns the
biological aspects of emotional life, and Darwin explores the animal origins of such human characteristics as the lifting of the eyebrows in moments of surprise and the raising of the upper lip in an aggressive sneer. A German translation of ''The Expression'' appeared in 1872; Dutch and French versions followed in 1873 and 1874. A second edition of the book, with only minor alterations, was published in 1890. Since its first publication, ''The Expression'' has never been out of print, but it has also been described as Darwin's "forgotten masterpiece".
Before Darwin, human emotional life had posed problems to the
western philosophical categories of ''mind'' and ''body''. Darwin's interest can be traced to his time as an
Edinburgh medical student and the 1824 edition of Sir
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell (12 November 177428 April 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spin ...
's ''Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression'' which argued for a spiritual dimension to the subject. In contrast, Darwin's biological approach links emotions to their origins in animal behaviour, and allows
cultural factors only an auxiliary role in the shaping of expression. This biological emphasis leads to a concentration on six emotional states: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. It also leads to an appreciation of the universal nature of expression, with its implication of
a single origin for the entire human species; and Darwin points to the importance of
emotional communication with children in their psychological development. Darwin sought out the opinions of some leading British psychiatrists, notably
James Crichton-Browne, in the preparation of the book which forms his main contribution to
psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
.
Amongst the innovations with this book are Darwin's circulation of a
questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix ...
(probably inspired by his cousin,
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, Anthropology, anthropologist, tropical Exploration, explorer, geographer, Inventio ...
) during his preparatory research; simple psychology experiments on the recognition of emotions with his friends and family; and (borrowing from
Duchenne de Boulogne, a physician at the
Salpêtrière) the use of
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...
in his presentation of scientific information. Publisher
John Murray warned Darwin that including the photographs would "poke a hole in the profits" of the book; and ''The Expression of the Emotions'' is an important landmark in the history of
book illustration.
The book's development: biographical aspects
Background: In the weeks before Queen Victoria's
coronation
A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the presentation of o ...
in 1838, Charles Darwin sought medical advice on his
mysterious physical symptoms, and then travelled to Scotland for a period of rest and a "geologizing expedition" – but actually spent some of his time re-exploring the old haunts of his undergraduate days. On the day of the coronation, 28 June 1838, Darwin was in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
. Two weeks later (15 July 1838), he opened a private notebook with philosophical and psychological speculation – the ''M Notebook'' – and, over the next three months, filled it with his thoughts about possible interactions of hereditary factors with the mental and behavioural aspects of life.
It should also be noted that Darwin made his first attempt at autobiography in August 1838.
The critical importance of the ''M Notebook'' has often been viewed in relation to Darwin's conception of ''
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
'' as the central mechanism of evolutionary development, which he fully grasped towards the end of September 1838, after encountering the sixth edition of
Thomas Malthus' ''Essay on Population'' (1826). The ''M notebook'' has a tentative and fragmented quality, especially in Darwin's descriptions of conversation with his father (a successful doctor with a special interest in psychiatric problems) about recurring patterns of behavior in successive generations of his patients' families. Darwin was anxious about the materialistic drift in his thinking – and of the disrepute which this could attract in early
Victorian England
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edward ...
– at the time, he was mentally preparing for marriage with his cousin
Emma Wedgwood who held firm Christian beliefs. On 21 September 1838, Darwin recorded a confused and disturbing dream in which he was involved in a public execution where the corpse came to life and joked about not running away and facing death like a hero. In summary: Darwin put together the central features of his evolutionary theory as he was developing an appreciation of human behavior and family life – and he was in some emotional turmoil. A discussion of the significance of Darwin's notebooks can be found in Paul H. Barrett's ''Metaphysics, Materialism and the Evolution of Mind – Early Writings of Charles Darwin'' (1980).
Development of the Text 1866–1872: Very little of Darwin's turmoil surfaced in ''On the Origin of Species'' in 1859, although Chapter 7 contains a mildly expressed argument on instinctive behaviour. In the public management of his evolutionary theory, Darwin understood that its relevance to human emotional life could draw a hostile response. Nevertheless, while preparing the text of ''
The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication'' in 1866, Darwin took the decision to publish a book on
''human'' ancestry,
sexual selection
Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection in which members of one biological sex choose mates of the other sex to mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex (in ...
and emotional life. After his initial correspondence with the psychiatrist
James Crichton-Browne, Darwin set aside his material concerning emotional expression in order to complete ''
The Descent of Man'', which covered
human ancestry and sexual selection. He finished work on ''The Descent of Man'' on 15 January 1871. Two days later, he started on ''The Expression of the Emotions'' and, working quickly, completed most of the text within four months; progress then slowed because of a recurrence of his symptoms, triggered by an attack from
St George Jackson Mivart
St. George Jackson Mivart (30 November 1827 – 1 April 1900) was an English biologist. He is famous for starting as an ardent believer in natural selection who later became one of its fiercest critics. Mivart attempted to reconcile ...
. However, on 22 August 1872, he finished work on the proofs. In this book, Darwin brings his evolutionary theory into close approximation with
behavioural science, although many Darwin scholars have remarked on a kind of spectral
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
haunting the text of the ''Emotions''.
Universal Nature of Expression: Darwin notes the universal nature of
expressions in the book, writing: "the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements."
This connection of mental states to the neurological organization of
movement (as the words ''motive'' and ''emotion'' suggest) is central to Darwin's understanding of emotion. Darwin himself displayed many biographical links between his psychological life and
locomotion, taking long, solitary walks around
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...
after
his mother's death in 1817, in his seashore rambles near Edinburgh with the Lamarckian evolutionist
Robert Edmond Grant in 1826/1827, and in the laying out of the sandwalk, his "thinking path", at
Down House
Down House is the former home of the English naturalist Charles Darwin and his family. It was in this house and garden that Darwin worked on his theory of evolution by natural selection, which he had conceived in London before moving to Down ...
in Kent in 1846. These aspects of Darwin's personal life are discussed in
John Bowlby's (1990)
psychoanalytic biography of Darwin.
Darwin emphasises a shared human and animal
ancestry in sharp contrast to the arguments deployed in
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell (12 November 177428 April 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spin ...
's ''Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression'' (1824). Bell claimed that the facial
muscles were divinely designed to express uniquely human
feelings. Eager to stress the distinction between human and animal communication, Bell wrote: "Expression is to the passions as
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
is to thought." In ''The Expression'', Darwin reformulates the issues at play, writing: "The force of language is much aided by the expressive movements of the face and body" - hinting at a neurological intimacy of language with psychomotor function (
body language
Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. ...
), and underscoring the social value of expression.
Darwin's Sources on Emotional Expression: Darwin had attended a debate about emotional expression at the
Plinian Society in December 1826 when he was a medical student at Edinburgh University. This had been prompted by the publication of Sir
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell (12 November 177428 April 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spin ...
's ''Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression''; and in his presentation, the
phrenologist
Phrenology () is a pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.Wihe, J. V. (2002). "Science and Pseudoscience: A Primer in Critical Thinking." In ''Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience'', pp. 195–203. C ...
William A.F. Browne (in a spirited account of
Robert Grant's
Lamarckist evolutionism) ridiculed Bell's theological explanations, pointing instead to the striking similarities of human and animal biology. The meeting then ended in uproar. Forty-five years later, Darwin revisits these arguments and recruits
Duchenne's (1862)
unmasking of the facial mechanisms, shifting the argument from philosophical speculation to scientific discourse and highlighting the importance of
facial expression. Darwin's response to Bell's natural theology is discussed by
Lucy Hartley (2001).
In the composition of the book, Darwin drew on worldwide responses to his
questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix ...
(circulated in the early months of 1867) concerning emotional expression in different ethnic groups; on anthropological memories from his time on ; on conversations with livestock breeders and pigeon fanciers; on observations on his infant son
William Erasmus Darwin (''"A Biographical Sketch of an Infant"'' – published in 1877 in the philosophical journal ''Mind''), on his family's dogs and cats, and on the orangutans at
London Zoo
London Zoo, also known as ZSL London Zoo or London Zoological Gardens is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. In 1831 or 1832, ...
; on simple psychology experiments with members of his family concerning the recognition of emotional expression; on the neurological insights of
Duchenne de Boulogne, a physician at the
Salpêtrière asylum in Paris; on hundreds of photographs of actors,
babies and children; and on descriptions of
psychiatric patients in the
West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at
Wakefield
Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...
in West Yorkshire. Darwin corresponded intensively with
James Crichton-Browne, the son of the phrenologist
William A. F. Browne and now the medical director of the Wakefield asylum. At the time, Crichton-Browne was publishing his extremely influential ''West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports'', and Darwin remarked to him that ''The Expression'' "should be called by Darwin ''and'' Browne". Darwin also drew on his personal experience of the symptoms of
bereavement and studied the text of
Henry Maudsley's 1870 Gulstonian lectures on ''Body and Mind''.
Darwin considered other approaches to the study of emotions, including their depiction in the arts – discussed by the actor
Henry Siddons
Henry Siddons (4 October 1774 – 12 April 1815) was an English actor and theatrical manager, now remembered as a writer on gesture.
Life
Siddons was the eldest child of Sarah Siddons, and was educated at Charterhouse School, being intended ...
in his ''Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action'' (1807) and by the anatomist
Robert Knox in his ''Manual of Artistic Anatomy'' (1852) – but abandoned them as unreliable, although Shakespearean quotations are scattered through the text. It is notable also that Darwin does not include a discussion of
deception
Deception or falsehood is an act or statement that misleads, hides the truth, or promotes a belief, concept, or idea that is not true. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda and sleight o ...
in his psychology of emotional expression.
Structure
Darwin opens the book with three chapters on "the general principles of expression", introducing the rather Lamarckist phrase ''serviceable associated habits''. With this phrase, Darwin seeks to describe the initially voluntary actions which come together to constitute the complex expressions of emotion. He then invokes a principle of ''antithesis'', through which opposite states of mind induce directly opposing movements. Finally, he discusses a ''direct action of the nervous system'', in which an overflow of emotion is widely discharged, producing more generalised emotional expression.
This is followed by a section (three more chapters) on modes of emotional expression peculiar to particular species, including man. He then moves on to the main argument with his characteristic approach of astonishingly widespread and detailed observations. Chapter 7 discusses "low spirits", including
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
,
grief
Grief is the response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or some living thing that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, grief also has physical, cogniti ...
, dejection and
despair; and the contrasting Chapter 8 "high spirits" with joy, love, tender feelings and
devotion. In his discussion of "low spirits", Darwin writes: "After the mind has suffered an acute paroxysm of grief, and the cause still continues, we fall into a state of low spirits, or we may be utterly cast down and dejected. Prolonged bodily pain, if not amounting to an agony, generally leads to the same state of mind. If we expect to suffer, we are anxious; if we have no hope of relief, we despair."
Subsequent chapters include considerations of "reflection and meditation" (associated with "ill-temper", sulkiness and determination), Chapter 10 on hatred and
anger
Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat.
A person experiencing anger will often experience physical effects, su ...
, Chapter 11 on "disdain, contempt,
disgust,
guilt,
pride
Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as "reasonable self-esteem" or "confidence and satisfaction in oneself". A healthy amount of pride is good, however, pride sometimes is used interchangeably with "conceit" or "arrogance" (among other words) w ...
, helplessness,
patience and affirmation" and Chapter 12 on "
surprise, astonishment,
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
and
horror". In his discussion of the emotion of disgust, Darwin notes its close links to the sense of smell, and conjectures an association with excretory products. In Chapter 13, Darwin discusses complex emotional states including self-attention,
shame
Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.
Definition
Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...
, shyness,
modesty and
blushing. Darwin describes blushing as "the most peculiar and most human of the expressions".
Darwin closes the book with Chapter 14 in which he recapitulates his main argument: he shows how human emotions link mental states with bodily movement, and are genetically determined, deriving from purposeful animal actions. He comments on the implications of the book: a single origin for the entire human species, with universal human expressions; and he stresses the social value of expression, citing the
emotional communication between mother and child.
Illustrations
This was one of the first books to be illustrated with photographs – with seven heliotype plates
– and the publisher
John Murray warned that this "would poke a
erriblehole in the profits".
The published book assembled illustrations rather like a Victorian family album, with engravings of the Darwin family's domestic pets by the zoological illustrator
T. W. Wood
T. W. Wood (born Thomas Wood, summer 1839 – c. 1910) was an English zoological illustrator responsible for the accurate drawings in major nineteenth century works of natural history including Darwin's ''The Descent of Man'' and Wallace's ...
as well as work by the artists
Briton Rivière
Briton Rivière (14 August 1840 in London20 April 1920 in London) was a British artist of Huguenot descent. He exhibited a variety of paintings at the Royal Academy, but devoted much of his life to animal paintings.
Biography
Briton's fa ...
,
Joseph Wolf and A.D. May. It also included portraits by the Swedish photographer
Oscar Rejlander
Oscar Gustave Rejlander (Stockholm, 19 October 1813 – Clapham, London, 18 January 1875) was a pioneering Victorian art photographer and an expert in photomontage. His collaboration with Charles Darwin on ''The Expression of the Emotions in ...
(1813–1875), anatomical diagrams by Sir
Charles Bell
Sir Charles Bell (12 November 177428 April 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spin ...
(1774–1842) and
Friedrich Henle
Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle (; 9 July 1809 – 13 May 1885) was a German physician, pathologist, and anatomist. He is credited with the discovery of the loop of Henle in the kidney. His essay, "On Miasma and Contagia," was an early argument f ...
(1809–1885), as well as illustrational quotations from the ''
Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine'' (1862) by the French neurologist
Duchenne de Boulogne (1806–1875). As a result of his domestic psychology experiments, Darwin reduced the number of commonly observed emotions from Duchenne's calculation of more than sixty
facial expressions, to just six "core" expressions: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness.
Darwin received dozens of photographs of psychiatric patients from
James Crichton-Browne, but included in the book only one engraving (
photoengraved by James Davis Cooper) based on these illustrations – sent on 6 June 1870 (along with Darwin's copy of Duchenne's ''Mécanisme'') (''Darwin Correspondence Project'': Letter 7220). This was ''Figure 19'', p. 296 – and showed a patient (Crichton-Browne reported) under the care of Dr James Gilchrist at the Southern Counties Asylum (of Scotland), the public wing of the
Crichton Royal in Dumfries.
Reception
Contemporary
The review in the January 1873 ''
Quarterly Journal of Science
''Quarterly Journal of Science'' was the title of two British scientific periodicals of the 19th century.
The first was established in 1816 by William Thomas Brande, as the ''Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts''. He edited it w ...
'' concluded that "although some parts are a little tedious, from the amount of minute detail required, there is throughout so much of acute observation and amusing anecdote as to render it perhaps more attractive to general readers than any of Mr. Darwin's previous work".
Modern
Eric Korn, in the ''
London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review o ...
'', describes how the book was claimed, and he argues subverted, by
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...
and her "sympathisers", and then presented afresh by
Paul Ekman. Ekman had collected pro-Darwin, anti-Mead evidence, Korn wrote, for the universality of human facial expression of emotions. Darwin, suggests Korn, avoided unsettling the
Victorian public by arguing that humans had "animal traits", and instead charmed them by telling stories of "human traits in animals", thus avoiding too much explicit talk of natural selection at work. Darwin preferred to leave the evolutionary implications hanging. Korn points out that the book has never been out of print since 1872, calling into question Ekman's talk of "Darwin's lost masterpiece".
The "Editor's notes" at the "Mead Project source page" on the book comment that
Publication
Darwin concluded work on the book with a sense of
relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...
. The proofs, tackled by his daughter
Henrietta ("Ettie") and son
Leo, required a major revision which made Darwin "sick of the subject and myself, and the world".
''The Expression'' was published by John Murray on 26 November 1872. It quickly sold around 7,000 copies and was widely praised as a charming and accessible introduction to Darwin's evolutionary theories.
A second edition was published by Darwin's son in 1890, without several revisions suggested by Darwin; these were not published until the third edition of 1999 (edited by
Paul Ekman).
Influence
Published as a sequel to ''The Descent of Man'', ''The Expression'' was assured of a wide readership in mid-Victorian England. However, the early death of
George Romanes (1848–1894) robbed Darwin of a powerful advocate in the field of
comparative psychology
Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area addr ...
and his impact on academic psychology was muted, partly because of
Wilhelm Wundt's dimensional approach to the emotions and the widespread influence of
the behaviorist school during the twentieth century.
The generous style of biological illustration was followed in work on
animal locomotion by photographer Eadweard
Muybridge (1830–1904) (leading to
cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography.
Cinematographers use a lens to focu ...
), and by the Scottish naturalist
James Bell Pettigrew (1832–1908); in the extensively (and controversially) illustrated works of the evolutionary biologist
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new s ...
; and – to a lesser extent – in
D'Arcy Thompson's ''
On Growth and Form'' (1917).
Darwin's ideas were followed up in
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
' ''What Is An Emotion ?'' (1884); and, in the
James-Lange theory of emotions, James develops Darwin's emphasis on the physical aspects, including the visceral (
autonomically mediated) components of emotion. In
Walter Cannon
Walter Bradford Cannon (October 19, 1871 – October 1, 1945) was an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. He coined the term "fight or flight response", and developed the theor ...
's ''Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage'' (1915), Cannon introduces the famous phrase ''
fight or flight response'', formulating emotions in terms of strategies for interpersonal behaviour and amplified in groups or crowds (
herd behavior
Herd behavior is the behavior of individuals in a group acting collectively without centralized direction. Herd behavior occurs in animals in herds, packs, bird flocks, fish schools and so on, as well as in humans. Voting, demonstrations, rio ...
). More recent psychological theories of emotion have been set out in the
Papez-Maclean hypothesis, the
Two factor theory of emotion (
Schachter and
Singer) and the
Theory of constructed emotion.
On 24 January 1895,
James Crichton-Browne delivered a notable lecture in
Dumfries
Dumfries ( ; sco, Dumfries; from gd, Dùn Phris ) is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is located near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth about by road from t ...
, Scotland ''On Emotional Expression'', presenting some of his reservations about Darwin's views. Crichton-Browne argued for a greater role for the higher
cortical centres in the regulation of the emotional response, and touches on the theme of
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
differences in emotional expression, anticipating the approach of sociologist
Norbert Elias in ''
The Civilizing Process''. In 1905, Sir
Arthur Mitchell, a psychiatrist who had served as
William A.F. Browne's deputy in the
Scottish Lunacy Commission, published ''About Dreaming, Laughing and Blushing'', linking some of Darwin's concerns with those of psychoanalysis.
Freud's early publications on the symptoms of
hysteria
Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...
(with his influential concept of unconscious
emotional conflict) acknowledged debts to Darwin's work on emotional expression and Darwin's impact on
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...
is discussed in detail by Lucille Ritvo.
John Bowlby makes extensive reference to Darwin's ideas in his presentations of
attachment theory. Constitutional (psychosomatic) theories of
personality
Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, ...
were elaborated by neurologist
Paul Schilder (1886–1940) with his notion of the
body image
Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, ps ...
, by the psychiatrist
Ernst Kretschmer and in the (now largely discredited) somato-typology of
W H Sheldon (1898–1977). The biological aspects of the human emotions were further explored by
Desmond Morris
Desmond John Morris FLS ''hon. caus.'' (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book ''The Naked Ape'', and for his telev ...
in his (richly illustrated) popular scientific book ''Manwatching'',
[Morris, Desmond (1978) ''Manwatching: A Field Guide To Human Behaviour'' London: Triad Panther.] and recent research has confirmed that while cultural factors are critical in the determination of gesture, genetic factors are crucial to the formation of
facial expression. In 2003, the
New York Academy of Sciences published ''Emotions Inside Out: 130 Years after Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'', a collection of 37 papers (edited by Paul Ekman) with recent research on the subject.
See also
*
Affect display
*
Body language
Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. ...
*
Book illustration
*
Charles Darwin's health
For much of his adult life, Charles Darwin's health was repeatedly compromised by an uncommon combination of symptoms, leaving him severely debilitated for long periods of time. However, in some ways this may have helped his work, and Charles Dar ...
*
Emotion and memory
Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail tha ...
*
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is most often defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information t ...
*
Emotions in animals
*
Evolution of emotion
The study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century. Evolution and natural selection has been applied to the study of human communication, mainly by Charles Darwin in his 1872 work, ''The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Ani ...
*
Facial expression
*
Nonverbal communication
*
Posture (psychology)
References
Sources
*
External links
*.
*.
*.
Free e-book versions:
D. Appleton, New York, 1899*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals, The
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Books by Charles Darwin
Books about emotions
Books about mental health
History of mental health in the United Kingdom
Books about evolution
Neuroscience books
English-language books
John Murray (publishing house) books