TY - JOUR
T1 - The origin of smiling, laughing, and crying
T2 - The defensive mimic theory
AU - Graziano, Michael S.A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding This work was supported by CONACYT doctoral funding 310271 and SEP-PRODEP award 511-6/17-9932 postdoctoral funding 993201.
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank Jason Micklefield, Binuraj R. K. Menon, Anna-Winona Struck, Matthew Bennett, Mark Thomson and Brian Law for their support on the research work by Ph.D. Jimenez-Rosales at the University of Manchester. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from both CONACYT scholarship 310271 and to SEP-PRODEP 511-6/17-9932.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2022/3/3
Y1 - 2022/3/3
N2 - Why do we leak lubricant from the eyes to solicit comfort from others? Why do we bare our teeth and crinkle our faces to express non-Aggression? The defensive mimic theory proposes that a broad range of human emotional expressions evolved originally as exaggerated, temporally extended mimics of the fast, defensive reflexes that normally protect the body surface. Defensive reflexes are so important to survival that they cannot be safely suppressed; yet they also broadcast information about an animal's internal state, information that can potentially be exploited by other animals. Once others can observe and exploit an animal's defensive reflexes, it may be advantageous to the animal to run interference by creating mimic defensive actions, thereby manipulating the behaviour of others. Through this interaction over millions of years, many human emotional expressions may have evolved. Here, human social signals including smiling, laughing and crying, are compared component-by-component with the known, well-studied features of primate defensive reflexes. It is suggested that the defensive mimic theory can adequately account for the physical form of not all, but a large range of, human emotional expression.
AB - Why do we leak lubricant from the eyes to solicit comfort from others? Why do we bare our teeth and crinkle our faces to express non-Aggression? The defensive mimic theory proposes that a broad range of human emotional expressions evolved originally as exaggerated, temporally extended mimics of the fast, defensive reflexes that normally protect the body surface. Defensive reflexes are so important to survival that they cannot be safely suppressed; yet they also broadcast information about an animal's internal state, information that can potentially be exploited by other animals. Once others can observe and exploit an animal's defensive reflexes, it may be advantageous to the animal to run interference by creating mimic defensive actions, thereby manipulating the behaviour of others. Through this interaction over millions of years, many human emotional expressions may have evolved. Here, human social signals including smiling, laughing and crying, are compared component-by-component with the known, well-studied features of primate defensive reflexes. It is suggested that the defensive mimic theory can adequately account for the physical form of not all, but a large range of, human emotional expression.
KW - Emotional expression
KW - crying
KW - laughter
KW - peripersonal space
KW - smile
KW - startle reflex
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U2 - 10.1017/ehs.2022.5
DO - 10.1017/ehs.2022.5
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85125842256
SN - 2513-843X
VL - 4
JO - Evolutionary Human Sciences
JF - Evolutionary Human Sciences
M1 - e10
ER -