Since the original universality studies more than 30 studies examining judgments of facial expressions have replicated the universal recognition of emotion in the face (reviewed in Matsumoto, 2001). Tomkins conducted the first study demonstrating that facial expressions were reliably associated with certain emotional states (Tomkins & McCarter, 1964). Darwin’s claims were resurrected by Tomkins (1962, 1963), who suggested that emotion was the basis of human motivation and that the seat of emotion was in the face. Early research testing Darwin’s ideas, however, was inconclusive (Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972), and the dominant perspective in psychology was that facial expressions were culture-specific – that is, just as every culture had its own verbal language, it had its own language of facial expressions.
Darwin (1872) was the first to suggest that they were universal his ideas about emotions were a centerpiece of his theory of evolution, suggesting that emotions and their expressions were biologically innate and evolutionarily adaptive, and that similarities in them could be seen phylogenetically. Arguably the most important contribution basic science has made to our understanding of emotion concerns the universality of facial expressions of emotion.