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On the systematic social role of expressed emotions: An embodied perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

Nicolas Vermeulen
Nicolas Vermeulen
Affiliation:
Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; and National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS), Belgium. Nicolas.Vermeulen@uclouvain.behttp://www.ecsa.ucl.ac.be/personnel/vermeulen/
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Abstract

Vigil suggests that expressed emotions are inherently learned and triggered in social contexts. A strict reading of this account is not consistent with the findings that individuals, even those who are congenitally blind, do express emotions in the absence of an audience. Rather, grounded cognition suggests that facial expressions might also be an embodied support used to represent emotional information.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 405 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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