A pre-Darwinian account of the facial expression of emotion: Thomas Wright's The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1604).

Abstract

"The study of emotional expression," it has recently been said, "has long been the provenance of scientific discovery and heated controversy" (Keltner et al., 2016, p. 467)-and nothing has been more central to this inquiry than attempts to understand the precise connection between affective experience and human facial expression. But as science moves forward, it is also wise to consider where it has been. This Brief Report reproduces a pre-Darwinian account of the facial expression of emotion from Thomas Wright's The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1604), one of the most interesting books on emotion from the English Renaissance. Before the modern scientific revolution, Wright's theorization anticipates several key aspects of 21st Century thought on the facial expression of emotion, an intriguing reminder of the connection between historical folk understanding and modern research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).