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The facial expressions of emotions are set in the genes and are innate rather than a result of cultural learning, according to a study published today the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Since the birth of blind individuals can not be learned behavior at moments of pride or embarrassment of looking at others, their expressions of victory or defeat are probably an innate biological propensity to humans, rather than a learned behavior," said Jessica Tracy, of the University of British Columbia.

Tracy and his collaborator, David Matsumoto of the State University of San Francisco-both are professors of psychology, originally published his study of expressions of blind athletes and non-blind, last August in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Matsumoto and Tracy compared the facial expressions of blind and partially sighted Judo at the Olympic and Paralympic games of 2004 with an analysis of more than 4,800 photographs of athletes from 23 countries.

The researchers found that individuals who are or who are blind, handled their expressions of emotion in the same manner in accordance with the social context.

For example, because of the public nature of the handover ceremony of Olympic medals, 85 percent of the winners of silver-dams that are the ones who lost the competition for the gold-showed "social smiles" during the ceremony.

The "social smiles" you only use the muscles around the mouth, while the genuine smile that makes his eyes shine and entrecierren and cheeks rise.

"The losers stretched upward by the lower lip, as if seeking to control the emotion in their faces, and many have achieved social smile," said Matsumoto.

"But the individuals who are blind from birth could not have learned to control his emotions in this way so visual, so there must be another mechanism," he added.

"The statistical correlation between facial expressions of individuals who can see and those who are blind was almost perfect," said the researcher. "This suggests that something which lies in our genes is the source of the facial expressions of emotion."

"Maybe our emotions and the systems that regulate traces of our ancestors are," said the researcher.

He added "it is possible that in response to negative emotions humans have developed a system that shuts the mouth so that they can not scream, bite or throw insults."

In an earlier study on this subject, published in 2005 by the National Geographic magazine, Matsumoto was the view of some 50,000 people who observed 12 different facial expressions on the internet.

Each represents a different level of anger. It was the first comprehensive study that tested the recognition of expressions in different cultures, and although women were slightly better than men in their view of emotions, most participants did not recognize subtle nuances of expressions.

"Most people can not distinguish the subtle nuances in facial expressions," said Matsumoto. "And in tense situations that can be extremely important 'reading' of facial expressions, when you have a few seconds to alleviate a potentially dangerous encounter."