Lay presentations of research on emotions often make two claims. First, they assert that all humans develop the same set of core emotions. This claim is called the “basic emotion approach” (Ekman, 1992). Second, they assert that each emotion produces a facial expression that is quickly recognized by others. This claim is known as the “common view” of facial expressions (Barrett et al., 2019).

These two claims taken together motivated emotion researchers to exhume the age-old “nature versus nurture” dichotomy. In this case, researchers ask: is the development of facial expressions the result of observational learning or of innate biological processes? (For critiques of the innateness concept, see Griffiths, 2002 and Lehrman, 1953.)

Researchers have addressed the learning-innate question by comparing the facial movements of congenitally blind people (i.e., totally blind since birth) with those of sighted people. Congenitally blind people cannot observe others’ facial expressions. Thus, if researchers find similarities between the blind and sighted groups, they point to inborn biological processes as the best explanation.

But some question the validity of the basic emotion approach. They believe that the scientific evidence fails to support the claim that facial expressions have a close correspondence to specific emotions (Barrett et al., 2019).

Charles Darwin (1872) conducted the first detailed investigation of emotions in his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin believed that our evolutionary history explained why humans showed facial expressions of emotion (Barrett, 2011). His evolutionary perspective inspired later researchers. One of these researchers was Paul Ekman, who currently is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Beginning in the 1960s, Ekman and his colleagues investigated the ability of people from various cultures around the world to produce and recognize facial expressions (Ekman, 1992, 1993). Their research results formed the basis for Ekman’s "basic emotion” approach, which assumes that:

Ekman focused on the emotions of

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