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Human learn to show emotions through facial expressions very early in life - babies learn how to express happiness and sadness by mimicking their caregivers’ expressions. Even as adults, we use facial expressions to let others into our emotional life, as well as to respond to the emotions of others.
Facial feedback hypothesis
The facial feedback hypothesis was first proposed by Charles Darwin; who believed that our facial expressions enhanced our emotional experiences.
Although it is now well established that facial expression enhances (not causes) the extent to which we experience emotion; it also seems that forcing ourselves to express an emotion can also influence our own emotions. When you put on a fake smile at a social event, you are actually doing yourself a favour; since you will soon start to feel better just because you are smiling so much.
Recently, studies have found that facial feedback – the facial experiences we make when experiencing emotions – can affect a variety of social experiences – including understanding and responding to the emotional and social needs of others.
People with Botox have more trouble identifying emotions
People inject Botox into facial muscles to prevent sagging skin and to maintain a youthful look. But for some time after being injected with Botox, the muscle in question stays stiff. Research conducted on people whose faces are injected with Botox shows that they tend to make more mistakes when asked to identify the emotions of people they saw in photographs or on film.
Implications for autism
People with autism spectrum issues consistently struggle with not only expressing their own emotions, but also with understanding the emotions of others. It turns out, that part of their confusion may stem from how their brains process incoming information about other people’s emotions.
Researchers have found that people with autism spectrum symptoms experienced a lot lesser facial feedback as compared to other people. Even when they consciously mimicked the expressions they saw, these individuals still struggled to recognizing the emotion.
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Source material from Brain Fodder