As Fridlund has pointed out in this regard, “[A]ny reasonable account of signaling must recognize that signals do not evolve to provide information detrimental to the signaler. Displayers must not signal automatically, but only when it is beneficial to do so, that is, when such signaling serves its motives. Automatic readouts or spill-outs of drive states (i.e., ‘facial expressions of emotion’) would be extinguished early in phylogeny in the service of deception, economy, and privacy. Thus, an individual who momentarily shows a pursed lip on an otherwise impassive face is not showing ‘leakage’ of anger but conflicting intentions . . . for example, to show stolidity and to threaten” (HFE, 131-32). In short, what if deception is widespread in nature and can be advantageous for the displayer? Wouldn’t this imply that Wicker and his research team were wrong to take for granted the meaning of the posed facial expressions used in the experiment because they ignored the potential for a mismatch between facial displays and their subjects’ actual emotional experiences?
Ruth Leys, "Both of Us Disgusted in My Insula”: Mirror-Neuron Theory and Emotional Empathy (2014)
