Season 3 Episode 2: Everyone has a Tell

In this episode we discuss the first three chapters of Darwin's On the Expression and Emotion of Man and Animals, and James fails to convince the team to refer to the book as EEMA for short. The first chapters of EEMA lays out Darwin's 3 principle foundations and each of us focused on one of the principles. The three principles are:

I. The principle of serviceable associated Habits.—or "I wear my emotions on my sleeve"

II. The principle of Antithesis.— or "Turn that frown upside down"

III. The principle of actions due to the constitution of the Nervous System, - or "Everyone has a tell"

One of the issues we discussed is what Darwin meant by "serviceable" when referring to the physical manifestation of the emotions. It seemed that Darwin felt that the clinched fist when angry or the closing of your eyes when you are startled by a loud noise are adaptive reflexes to prepare or protect you from the perceived threat that would accompany that emotion.

We discussed the oddity of Principle 2 in that Darwin seemed to not give adaptive value to the associated behaviors but saw them more as an opposite signal of the emotion associated with Principle 1. One of the clear examples Darwin discussed was the behaviors we see in our dogs and cats when they are expressing anger compared to when they are expressing happiness.

Fig. 5. Dog approaching another dog with hostile intentions. By Mr. Riviere.
image from http://darwin-online.org.uk/

Fig. 6. The Same in a humble and affectionate frame of mind. By Mr. Riviere.
image from http://darwin-online.org.uk/

James was enamored by the block print of the dog that seemed to be quite friendly with a person's leg. Here is the image.

At the end of the podcast we discussed a paper written by Gregory Radick entitled Darwin's Puzzling Expression. Wonderfully the article  is available for free as well as the entire issue of

Comptes Rendus Biologies

Volume 333, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 181-187

 which can be found here.


The opening and closing theme to Discovering Darwin is "May" by Jared C. Balogh.
Interlude music is Lobo Loco - Spencer Bluegrass