COM 225 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Polygraph, Facial Expression, Display Rules

• School: University at Buffalo
• Department: Communication
• Course: COM 225
• Professor: Scott Murszewski

Document Summary

There are 7 basic human emotions, that have a corresponding instinctive facial expressions: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, contempt, anger, disgust. Movement from muscle that orbits the eye. Lips slightly stretched horizontally back to ears. Lip corner tightened and raised on only one side of face. Regardless of skin color, culture and geographic origin, all humans display the same basic facial expressions of emotion. While facial expressions of emotion are universal and instinctive, cross-cultural differences do exist. Display rules: humans have conscious control over facial expressions, and will moderate their facial expressions in context, based on cultural norms. There are two aspects (central and peripheral) to your nervous system: central: under our conscious control, peripheral: running in the background (like breathing) Facial expressions are affected by both aspects of the nervous system: stroke victim and smile- contempt smile b/c your body isn"t working properly due to stroke. Don"t assume due to body language signs that an emotion is certain.