Landis’ Facial Expressions Experiment- 1924


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Carney Landis developed an experiment to reveal if different emotions create facial expressions specific to that emotion. The point of this experiment was to see if all people have a common expression when feeling disgust, shock, joy, etc.


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Participants were shown a live rat and given instructions to behead it. While all the participants were repulsed by the idea, one third did it. The situation was worsened by the fact that most of the students had no idea how to perform this operation in a humane manner and the animals were forced to experience great suffering. For the one third who refused to perform the decapitation, Landis would pick up the knife and cut the animals head off for them.


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