Facial expressions run in families

Oct 19 2006

According to a team of Israeli scientists the faces we pull when we are emotional are inherited from our ancestors.

The team have discovered that facial expressions among family members are strikingly similar and they say the expressions on our faces when we are happy, sad or angry may be passed from generation to generation.

It was Charles Darwin in 1872 who first suggested that facial expressions were innate and the research team from the University of Haifa were eager to test the theory.

The team led by Eviatar Nevo, an evolutionary biologist at the university, compared 21 blind people along with about 30 of their sighted family members by filming as many as 43 expressions of various emotions such as happiness, sadness, and anger.

The recorded visuals showed significant similarities in the facial expressions among the blind participants and their sighted relatives, a “signature” effect, especially of negative emotions like anger.

Co-researcher Gili Peleg, says they found that facial expressions are typical to families which suggests that facial expressions are inherited and therefore have an evolutionary basis.

Peleg says the next step is to find the exact genes that influence facial expression and such work could influence research into conditions such as autism, where facial expressions are central to the disorder.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.