Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

What was needed was the development of a measure of emotion that approaches the contradictions inherent in a Zen koan. What was needed was an objective, in-the-moment measure that would distill our subjective experiences into unambiguous, quantifiable measures that could be put onto paper and interpreted and debated by scientists. To capture the objective subjective, Ekman and Wallace Friesen devoted seven years, without funding or promise of publication, to developing the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), an anatomically based method for identifying every visible facial muscle movement in the frame-by-frame analysis of facial expression as it occurs in the seamless flow of social interaction. To do so, they boned up on facial anatomy. They trained themselves in the ability to move individual facial muscles (Ekman can roll his eyebrows from one side to the other, like a wave). To document the activity of the more remote muscles in their faces, they stimulated facial muscles layered deep below the surface of the skin with mild electric shock. They then translated how changes in facial appearance—new creases, wrinkles, dimples, bulges—are brought about by different muscle movements, and combinations of muscle movements, into an esoteric language of action units. Ekman and Friesen had given psychological science the first objective mea-sure of specific emotion that could be used in any lab around the world, and in almost any context, as long as the emotional behavior was videotaped and researchers were manic enough to take the 100 hours to learn FACs and the hour required to reliably code a single minute of behavior.

       

AU        

Description        

Facial Muscle        

Example Image        

1        

Inner Brow Raiser        

Frontalis, pars medialis                

2        

Outer Brow Raiser        

Frontalis, pars lateralis                

4        

Brow Lowerer        

Corrugator supercilii, Depressor supercilii                

5        

Upper Lid Raiser        

Levator palpebrae superioris                

6        

Cheek Raiser        

Orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis                

7        

Lid Tightener        

Orbicularis oculi, pars palpebralis                

9        

Nose Wrinkler        

Levator labii superioris alaquae nasi                

10        

Upper Lip Raiser        

Levator labii superioris                

11        

Nasolabial Deepener        

Zygomaticus minor                

12        

Lip Corner Puller        

Zygomaticus major

In the thirty years since this method of measuring facial expression has been developed and distributed to scientists, hundreds of studies have discovered that the muscle configurations that Darwin described for many emotions correspond to the facial expressions people display when feeling the emotion. Ekman’s work on facial expression catalyzed a new field—affective science—and led to a more precise understanding of the place of emotion in the brain, the role of emotion in social life, parallels between human and nonhuman emotion, and how we all have different emotional styles. For thirty years, scientists have relied on these methods, and those six emotions, to parse human emotional life. Amid the hundreds of studies, the handbooks, the reviews, the new methodologies and old controversies, one finds empirical support for three deep insights into emotion, the focus of the next chapter. Emotions are signs of our deepest commitments. They are wired into our nervous system. Emotions are intuitive guides to our most important ethical judgments. Our pursuit of the meaningful life requires an engagement with emotion. Our jen ratios are revealed in subtle movements of the face.

3Rational Irrationality

 

ISTILL REMEMBER THE DAY as clear as a bell. Off to the side of the seventh-grade four square game, the love of my life, Lynn Freitas, approached me with hands coyly behind her back. She came unusually close—we were face to face, separated by nine to ten inches—and with a delighted smile framed by her rolling, curly hair asked, “Hey, Dacher, wanna screw?” A surge of thoughts raced through my mind—at last she had recognized my subtle prepubescent allure, at last my longings would make contact with inexplicable happenings on my middle school playground. As I was in the midst of mumbling an earnest and affirmative reply, she held her hand in front of me, palm up, with a screw lying flat on her tender fingers. All I remember was a roar of laughter from the cabal of finger-pointing girls who had suddenly surrounded me to witness this character assassination.