Was Darwin wrong? Darwin never claimed in his great book, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals , that all facial expressions are universal—only a specific set of expressions that he had observed and studied. They found strong cross-cultural agreement in the labeling of those expressions. Might mass media account for cross-cultural agreement? Ekman addressed this question by studying people in a Stone Age culture in New Guinea, who had seen few if any outsiders and no media portrayals of emotion. These preliterate people also recognized the same emotions when shown the Darwin-Tomkins set.

By University of California - Berkeley December 16, Facial expressions of emotion transcend geography and culture worldwide, new study shows. Credit: Alan Cowen. At a time when nativism is on the rise, study reveals the universality of human emotional expression.

A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication.