◌ ONE ORIGIN The story · What every human does

🙂 WHAT EVERY HUMAN DOES · 02

The Same Face

People born blind, who have never seen a face, make the same winning and losing expressions as everyone else.

If expressions are learned by watching other people, someone who has never seen a face should not have them. In 2009 David Matsumoto and Bob Willingham tested that on the cleanest natural experiment available: judo. Seventy-six blind athletes at the 2004 Paralympics, eighty-four sighted athletes at the 2004 Olympics, photographed in the seconds after a match ended.

Close portrait of a face mid-expression, half lit, showing the muscles around the eyes and mouth.
The same muscles, in the same order, on a face that has never watched another one.

    Two smiles, two kinds of athlete

    Switch between the felt smile and the social smile to see which muscles are doing the work. Then switch the athlete. The face does not change — and that is the result.

    Expression
    Athlete

    The drawing is a schematic, not a photograph and not a measurement. The muscle names are the ones the study identifies; the picture is here to show which of them a felt smile adds.

    The two smiles

    Duchenne described the difference in 1862: a genuine smile recruits the muscle around the eye as well as the one around the mouth.

      What the study found

        Where this is argued about

        The blind-athlete result is strong evidence that some expressions are not learned by watching. Whether that settles the question of universal emotion categories is a genuine, unsettled argument.

          Sources

            More ways we’re connected

            Every way to put the same point — that every human line on Earth runs back to one place — in your own hands.

            Your own numbers

            Your birthday crowdA date you share with millions. Your family treeMore branches. Shared roots. Your place, real sizeA fairer view of somewhere you love. A moment we shareDifferent clocks. Happening together.

            The deep record

            Two chains, one continentMitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam, drawn against time. The shared ancestor counterType a crowd. Find the ancestor every one of them shares. Count the hands between usFewer than 50 links separate any two people alive. Fourteen peoples, one patternStructural universals across five continents.

            Shifting the frame

            Footsteps of KinshipDrag 300,000 years of leaving Africa, one toolkit at a time. Root to BranchThousands of languages branching from African roots. The Deep Time MirrorYour face, aligned with the oldest skulls we have. The Deep History Time MachineWatch borders, cities and farms fade off the planet. The Great-Grandparent MultiplierYour family tree has to loop. Here is the maths. Stardust & SoilWhat you are made of, and where each atom was forged. The Borderless Night SkySame stars. Many skies. One imagination. The Reverse Migration PostcardA line from your city back to the Great Rift Valley.

            Feel the pattern

            The Converging RiversEvery river runs back to the Rift. Drag to pull a thread home. The Synchronized BreathOne atmosphere. Hold to slow and breathe with the globe. The Shared LexiconMama, water, fire: one breath, many scripts. The Erasure of BordersScroll to peel the modern map down to a starlit Africa. The Mirror of AgesMany shades, one composite face. Unify the spectrum.

            What every human does

            Everybody SingsMusic was in all 315 societies the census read. All of them. The Same FaceBorn blind, never seen a face — and the same smile on winning. Two Hundred MillisecondsTen languages, five continents, one fifth of a second.