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evidence of game designers' ability to incorporate emotion through game-
play. I want to look at a few other aspects of emotional interaction, begin-
ning with facial expression.
In his book
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(1872),
Charles Darwin meticulously explored the commonalities and differences
among emotional expressions as well as the “why” of the ones he identi-
fi ed as basic. Darwin posited that emotional expressions (primarily facial)
were universal among humans and not dependent upon culture or learn-
ing. Long opposed by cultural relativists, Darwin's work has reemerged as
good science, stimulating new interest and research in recent years. In the
preface to the third edition, scholar Paul Eckman notes that since the mid-
1970s, “systematic research using quantitative methods has tested Darwin's
ideas about universality.”
6
Eckman's research confi rmed Darwin's conclu-
sions. While gesture is much more culturally relative, Darwin said, facial
expressions related to basic emotions are legible to all humans.
Of the many emotions treated in Darwin's book, at least six are seen to
be fundamentally universal: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and
anger. Images of masks worn in the Greek theatre exist for each of these
emotions. Both Darwin and Eckman discuss many more emotions as can-
didates for universal expression, including amusement, contempt, content-
ment, embarrassment, guilt, shame, pride, and relief. Facial expressions of
many of these emotions can be seen in the leather masks used for “stock”
characters of the Commedia dell'Arte, including the pompous doctor Il
Dottore, the miserly merchant Pantalone, or the amorous wit Arlecchino.
The Commedia was a semi-improvisational street theatre form that reached
its zenith in 16th-century Italy. The stock characters may be traced back
at least to Roman Comedy and continued through the Middle Ages via
wandering Medieval entertainers (Duchartre 1966). The Greek and Italian
masks—along with masks from Africa, Asia, and around the world—attest
dramatically to the “universal legibility” of emotional facial expressions.
Since the original version of this topic, we have developed sophisti-
cated technological means for recognizing faces and facial expressions.
Likewise, animation techniques have given us the ability to represent them
with great acuity. It follows that one way we can use these affordances is to
“read” emotional facial expressions of interactors and to respond to them
6. Eckman was, by the way, science advisor to the remarkable and too-short television series
Lie to Me
(2009-2011), centered on the work of an investigator (played by Tim Roth) who is
uncannily skilled at reading facial and body cues.
