Kathleen Bogart, pictured above, has a rare congenital condition called Moebious syndrome. Moebious syndrome is a neurological disorder that primarily affects the 6th and 7th cranial nerves, leaving those with the condition unable to move their faces. The facial paralysis causes those with the disorder to be unable to smile, frown, suck, grimace, or even blink their eyes. In addition, their eyes only move laterally, making sideways glances and eye rolling out of the picture as well. (To learn more about Moebious Syndrome, go to the Moebious Syndrome Foundation).
Reeve (2009) spent quiet a bit of time throughout the book discussing how important facial expressions are to emotion. The facial feedback hypothesis, introduced in Chapter 12, states that emotion is the awareness of feedback from our own facial expressions. Facial expressions are also important in social interactions. Facial expressions allow us to ascertain the emotion & mood of the people around us and allow the people around us to ascertain out emotional state & mood. Reeve states that emotions are intrinsic to interpersonal relationships, and they play a role in creating, maintaining, and dissolving interpersonal relationships. We often automatically mimic other people's emotions during interactions. By mimicking facial expressions facial feedback hypothesis would state that we are then able to understand the other person's emotional state.
Obviously emotions play a large role in our social interactions, whether it is by how we are feeling or understanding and mimicking the emotions of someone else. Then by conjecture the inability to express emotions via facial expression, like those suffering from Moebious syndrome, can cause a variety of problems with social interaction. Some researchers assumed that because those with Moebious cannot mimic facial expressions they would not be able to read other people's emotions as well as those of us who do not have Moebious syndrome. However, recent research has shown that people who are suffering from Moebious syndrome are able to read facial expression just as well as the rest of us can. This suggests that the brain uses more than just facial mimicry to evaluate emotions.
While those who suffer from Moebious syndrome can read others facial expressions just as well as the rest of us, they have to use other methods to display their own emotions. Most individuals with Moebious develop other nonverbal cues to express emotions. In the same way that those who are blind have better developed senses of smell, hearing, and touch, those with Moebious syndrome have developed better vocal cues, gestures, and body positions. This development may also aid those with Moebious in reading other's emotions outside of facial expressions. In fact it was found that by mimicking one's conversation partner, it is more difficult to determine if they are lying or even uncomfortable.
While, many of these individuals are able to develop such skills, that still does not make social interaction easy. Many people are uncomfortable when interacting with someone who does not mimic their facial expressions. I had never thought about how lucky I am to be able to express my emotions on my face - mostly because many times people are able to read me really easily because I don't control my facial expressions - but I interacting with others is made so much easier by having that ability.
To learn more about some of the research being conducted concerning facial expressions, Moebious syndrome, and Kathleen Bogart read this recent NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/health/06mind.html?pagewanted=1&sq=emotions&st=cse&scp=4
This post was incredibly interesting to me! I chose to read Paul Ekman’s book about emotion for my book report, and his research would agree with the idea that even people without the ability to mimic the facial expressions of others would still be able to recognize the emotion on other people’s faces. Ekman has done extensive research on the universality of emotional facial expressions and has found that every culture, even ones isolated from the rest of the world (tribal culture in Papua New Guinea) can recognize the basic facial expressions for emotions like anger, joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and surprise quite accurately.
This condition is pretty rare (the article said less than 1 in 100,000 children are born with it) and I’d never heard of it before, but I can see how it would cause some pretty huge problems. In the textbook, Reeve discusses the social functions that emotions have: communicate our feelings to others, influence how others interact with us, invite and facilitate social interaction, and create, maintain, and dissolve relationships (Reeve, 2009, 319). All of these social functions are not only dependent upon having emotion, but having the ability to express it. None of these functions work without the ability to express emotion, and a vast amount of emotion is displayed in one’s facial expressions.
Social interaction and functioning would have to be approached with a completely different method than relying on facial expressions. The posted article talked about how Kathleen tries to express emotion with other nonverbal signals and her tone of voice. This could be effective in some situations, but would be very difficult for social functioning in others. Kathleen talked about how she helped with relief after Hurricane Katrina as a social worker and saw emotional connections break down because of her inability to show emotion using facial expressions. She would talk to people and be unable to mimic the expression of hurt or sadness on their faces, and the people sharing with her would become disconnected because they would see that she wasn’t sharing their emotions. This part of Kathleen’s story made me feel sad for her that she can’t experience emotional connections the way others can that are able to make the facial expressions that come so naturally and are taken for granted.
I am occasionally annoyed by the fact that my facial expressions betray what I’m feeling sometimes, but after reading this story, I am thankful for my ability to use my face to express emotions any time I want to. I’m much less annoyed by my emotional expression and much more thankful that I can express it easily.
I think this type of disorder is so interesting because facial expressions ARE so important for successful social interactions. I don’t even know how I would do it if I had something like Moebious syndrome. The article discusses how important facial mimicry is believed to be to understanding and reading other people’s emotions. It is very important that newer studies are researching this phenomenon in those with Moebious syndrome and disorders like this. New studies have shown that those with these disorders actually are as able to distinguish emotions from facial expressions as regular adults even though they are not able to mimic them. This shows that there are many more components wrapped up in recognizing emotions than just being able to mimic them. With these results, we can begin to determine what else is involved and how we can utilize those to help people who have this disability or those who are socially awkward.
There are so many applications of facial expressions of emotion. If you think about our daily lives, there isn’t much we do without making a facial expression. Using these expressions allows us to communicate with others more than just with words. We are able to express what we truly mean, sometimes even if we do not know what we mean ourselves. It is especially important when we are in situations that could result in trouble, such as threatening situations, scary situations, etc. If someone is threatening you, being able to express emotions such as sympathy, sadness, etc. may actually save you from being hurt. The other individual automatically mimicking your facial expression allows them to sympathize with your emotions and it is something that we typically do without thinking. It allows us to connect on a deeper level. There is controversy as to whether facial expressions of emotions are universal or relative. There is evidence that some are universal, yet I believe that many are relative, such as different cultures expressing sadness differently. Since many are relative, having a disorder such as Moebious syndrome would be even more difficult. Not showing any facial expression in different situations may mean different things to different cultures. It could cause problems in social situations besides looking indifferent and uncaring. It may even get you into trouble and dangerous situations. If someone thinks you are ignoring them and showing no emotion, they may get angry and outrage. One way that people who have these disorders cope with the social problems caused by this is to use nonverbal signals and perfecting the tone of their voice. Kathleen in the article discusses how she attempted to do this after Hurricane Katrina, yet she was unable to connect with those she would counsel and help. She could not display the sadness and hurt those who she talked to would. I couldn’t imagine the frustration that would come with. It made me realize even more how important being able to display emotions are when I was reading this article because I found myself displaying sadness throughout. If you have ever tried, you’d realize how difficult it is to not mimic emotions throughout conversation. We experienced this during class while Dr. MacLin was talking about disgusting feelings. She and we naturally made a scrunchy face. It must be a difficult road for those with Moebious syndrome, however, there does seem to be some hope in the studies they are conducting to learn more about how facial mimicry is connected to emotions.