INNATE AND UNIVERSAL FACIAL EXPRESSIONS - EVIDENCE FROM DEVELOPMENTALAND CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

The idea of innate and universal facial expressions that have links wi th human emotions was given the status of scientific hypothesis by Dar win (1872/1965). Substantial evidence, old and new, supports his hypot hesis. Much of the evidence is independent of language, but Russell's (1994) criticisms of the hypothesis focus on language-dependent data. In this article, iris argued that Russell's critique was off target in that his arguments relate only to a hypothesis of the universality of semantic attributions and overstated in that he used questionable log ic in designing studies to support his claims. It is also argued that Russell misinterpreted the relation between the universality hypothesi s and differential emotions theory. Finally, new evidence is presented that supports the Darwinian hypothesis of the innateness and universa lity of the facial expressions of a limited set of emotions and the ef ficacy of the most commonly used method of testing it.