Facial expressions during an extremely intense emotional situation: Toreros’ lip funnel

Abstract

Since Darwin, emotions have been defined as adaptive reactions that increase the probability of survival. In this framework, a situation in which individuals fight for their life with an imposing, aggressive animal should be an ideal elicitor of emotions and their corresponding facial expressions. We tested the correspondence between the facial expressions of 22 bullfighters (toreros) and their reported emotions at different stages of the fight. Toreros reported intense experiences of happiness or fear, but there were no observable instances of the facial expressions predicted for these emotions (e.g. smiles). Instead toreros displayed frowning, nostril dilatation, parted lips, and, protruding funneled lips in particular. In a second study we found that 149 judges could not recognize toreros’ facial movements as expressions of emotion. Absence of a universal signal value strongly suggests that toreros’ expressions are not an undescribed expression of basic emotions. The observed non-correspondence between intense reported emotions and their predicted expressions casts doubt on one of the most popular assumptions in contemporary psychology and provides new evidence for an alternative theoretical view. In this view, facial expressions are not signals of emotion, but actions that are roughly coextensive with other processes and structures in the framework of an emotional episode.