Smiles and scowls in our genes

By Daniel Florien on January 3, 2009 in Biology, Science.

A study has found that “facial expressions we make to show or hide our emotions are hardwired into our brains rather than learned during life”:

Blind and sighted athletes made the same expressions when they won and lost, US researchers found.

This, the study reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study suggests, meant the expressions were not picked up by watching others.

The researchers believe they could be remnants of evolutionary history.

Hmm, as opposed to remnants of what — creationist history?

(via)

4 Comments

JStein

January 3, 2009 at 6:24 pm

That’s pretty funny. I’ve heard some interesting stuff about facial expressions (Pinker laid out some interesting stuff in “How the Mind Works” on language and facial expressions). Interesting to see genetic components, but not surprising.

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Dave

January 4, 2009 at 2:16 am

In the stories told in the Bible by John, it’s claimed Jesus gives a man blind from birth his sight. And yet, it would require a greater miracle to do that.

We know that those who are blind from birth or shortly there after, who have sight given to them, have difficulty understanding interpreting the world visually for a long time.

They may know what a ball feels like, they may know what a cube feels like, but when the gift of sight is theirs to enjoy, they don’t know by sight which objects are round, and which are square. They can’t recognize faces, or make sense of motion.

Here’s a link to a story about one such person:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/man-blind-for-40-years-tells-of-struggle-to-adapt-537009.html

So even if there was a Jesus who gave a sightless man his sight, the beneficiary of that miracle would have found it impossible to interpret the world around him. But none of that is mentioned in John’s incredible story, because an understanding of how human sight works was not understood when the Bible was created.

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barelyEvolved

January 5, 2009 at 8:27 am

But Dave, Jesus obviously just re-wired his brain magically to enable him to understand the visual world too! Come on, use some imagination! (The Bible writers did!)

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arkonbey

January 5, 2009 at 10:47 am

Hmm, as opposed to remnants of what — creationist history?

well, human history for one. You know, arrows and lines on a map, who conquered whom, and such;)

Dave: just to be a devil’s advocate with only a smattering of bible knowledge: if the blind man in John had not been born blind, he’d have not had the problem. That was, however, a fascinating article. How did Geordi LaForge deal with it, I wonder?

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