Hereditary family signature of facial expression
- 24 October 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 103 (43), 15921-15926
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0607551103
Abstract
Although facial expressions of emotion are universal, individual differences create a facial expression “signature” for each person; but, is there a unique family facial expression signature? Only a few family studies on the heredity of facial expressions have been performed, none of which compared the gestalt of movements in various emotional states; they compared only a few movements in one or two emotional states. No studies, to our knowledge, have compared movements of congenitally blind subjects with their relatives to our knowledge. Using two types of analyses, we show a correlation between movements of congenitally blind subjects with those of their relatives in think-concentrate, sadness, anger, disgust, joy, and surprise and provide evidence for a unique family facial expression signature. In the analysis “in-out family test,” a particular movement was compared each time across subjects. Results show that the frequency of occurrence of a movement of a congenitally blind subject in his family is significantly higher than that outside of his family in think-concentrate, sadness, and anger. In the analysis “the classification test,” in which congenitally blind subjects were classified to their families according to the gestalt of movements, results show 80% correct classification over the entire interview and 75% in anger. Analysis of the movements' frequencies in anger revealed a correlation between the movements' frequencies of congenitally blind individuals and those of their relatives. This study anticipates discovering genes that influence facial expressions, understanding their evolutionary significance, and elucidating repair mechanisms for syndromes lacking facial expression, such as autism.Keywords
This publication has 40 references indexed in Scilit:
- Facial asymmetry quantification for expression invariant human identificationComputer Vision and Image Understanding, 2003
- High frequency of facial expressions corresponding to confusion, concentration, and worry in an analysis of naturally occurring facial expressions of Americans.Emotion, 2003
- Infant affective responses to mother's still face at 6 months differentially predict externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 18 months.Developmental Psychology, 2001
- Facial expression and the affective component of cynical hostility in male coronary heart disease patients.Health Psychology, 1998
- Mothers' affective behavior with infant siblings: Stability and change.Developmental Psychology, 1997
- Behavioral markers and recognizability of the smile of enjoyment.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1993
- Spontaneous Expressive Control in Blind and Sighted ChildrenChild Development, 1989
- A comparative study of ordinary cross-validation, v-fold cross-validation and the repeated learning-testing methodsBiometrika, 1989
- Patterns on the Face: The Eyebrow Flash in Crosscultural ComparisonEthology, 1988
- Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review.Systematic Zoology, 1974