Expressive development and basic emotions

Abstract

One important emotion theory currently postulates an innate tie between specific infant facial expressions and a set of discrete basic emotions. The arguments and evidence relevant to this assertion are reviewed. New data are presented from a naturalistic study of one infant's early expressive development and a judgement study of infant facial, vocal, and body activity. These data challenge the innate tie hypothesis. Based on dynamical systems systems theory, an alternate conceptual framework is presented that may allow us to usefully retain the concept of basic emotions while accommodating the data on infant expressive development.