Introduction

We have argued (Tomkins, 1962) that affective responses are the primary motives of human beings. We have further assumed that affects are primarily facial behaviors and secondarily outer skeletal and inner visceral behavior. When we become aware of these facial responses (with or without concurrent visceral responses), we are aware of our affects. Later, we learn to generate from memory, images of these same responses which we can become aware of as affect, with or without repetition of facial, skeletal, or visceral responses. On the other hand, we have also assumed that one may respond with facial affective responses without necessarily becoming aware of the feedback from these responses. In short, although the awareness of the feedback of the facial response is the experience of affect, the same experience may later be retrieved from memory, thus bypassing the necessity for a facial response, or the feedback of the facial response may remain unconscious and not be transformed into a conscious message.

Most contemporary investigators have assumed, after the James–Lange theory, that the inner bodily responses are the chief site of the emotions. Important as these undoubtedly are, we regard them as of secondary importance to the expression of emotion through the face. We regard the relationship between the face and the viscera as analogous to that between the fingers, forearm, upper arm, shoulders, and body. The finger does not “express” what is in the forearm, or shoulder, or trunk.