Back in ye olden tymes of the 1800s, a French physician named Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne was shocking people's faces with electric probes to figure out how emotions work. His main test subject was some random old toothless dude whose face was conveniently numb to pain. Perfect for zapping!
Duchenne would jolt different facial muscles and snap photos of the resulting expressions, creating what was basically a 19th-century emoji catalog. His greatest hit? Discovering that real smiles use both mouth AND eye muscles — now known as the "Duchenne smile." That's why your favorite billionaire's smile gives you the creeps — he's only using his mouth muscles like some kind of emotion-faking robot.
Duchenne is considered the founding father of modern neurology, inventing muscle biopsies and nerve tests while working from a psychiatric hospital because the medical establishment was all "Sir, you cannot just go around electrocuting people's faces." But his work was so important that famous neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot called him "my master in neurology," and Charles Darwin used his work for his own book about evolution and emotions.
According to Wikipedia, Duchenne believed he was cracking a "God-given language of facial signs":
In the face our creator was not concerned with mechanical necessity. He was able in his wisdom or – please pardon this manner of speaking – in pursuing a divine fantasy … to put any particular muscles into action, one alone or several muscles together, when He wished the characteristic signs of the emotions, even the most fleeting, to be written briefly on man's face. Once this language of facial expression was created, it sufficed for Him to give all human beings the instinctive faculty of always expressing their sentiments by contracting the same muscles. This rendered the language universal and immutable.
Turns out God gave us facial muscles specifically for throwing shade, and it took a French doctor shocking random people's faces to figure it out.
Previously:
• Spot the fake smile
• Americans smile, Brits grimace?
