Question

Describe the theory of universality of emotions

Answer 1

Paul Ekman identified six basic universal emotions, this was based on his research on the culture of people from the Fori tribe in Papua New Guinea. The study started with him and his colleagues showing the tribe members pictures of people expressing emotions, the tribe identified six emotions in the pictures. They then took pictures of this tribe with various facial expressions and showed these pictures to various other cultures and people across the word. They found that people all over the world identified the same emotions, which means that these emotions were universal in nature and meant the same for every culture and the people. The six basic emotions which were identified are: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.