Facial behaviors of medal winners of the judo competition at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games were coded with P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen's (1978) Facial Affect Coding System (FACS) and interpreted using their Emotion FACS dictionary. Winners' spontaneous expressions were captured immediately when they completed medal matches, when they received their medal from a dignitary, and when they posed on the podium. The 84 athletes who contributed expressions came from 35 countries. The findings strongly supported the notion that expressions occur in relation to emotionally evocative contexts in people of all cultures, that these expressions correspond to the facial expressions of emotion considered to be universal, that expressions provide information that can reliably differentiate the antecedent situations that produced them, and that expressions that occur without inhibition are different than those that occur in social and interactive settings.Keywords: emotion, facial expressions, Olympic Games, universality, FACS Since Darwin's (1872/1998) classic work, the nature and function of facial expressions of emotion have long been a topic of interest and debate. They are universally recognized (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002;; but see critiques by Russell, 1991, and rejoinders by Ekman, 1994Izard, 1994), are displayed by congenitally blind infants and children (Charlesworth & Kreutzer, 1973) and nonhuman primates (Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1973;Geen, 1992;Hauser, 1993;Snowdon, 2003), are associated with distinct physiological signatures (Davidson, 2003;Ekman, Levenson, & Friesen, 1983;Levenson, Ekman, & Friesen, 1990, Levenson, Ekman, Heider, & Friesen, 1992Tsai & Levenson, 1997), and correspond to emotion taxonomies around the world (Romney, Moore, & Rusch, 1997;Shaver, Murdaya, & Fraley, 2001;Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O'Connor, 1987). However, questions exist concerning whether or not spontaneous expressions of emotion occur in real-life, naturalistic settings. We contribute to this literature by reporting on our examination of emotional expressions of athletes at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games in three very different but highly charged emotional contexts to address basic questions about the nature of spontaneous facial expressions of emotion.
The Link Between Emotionally Evocative Contexts and Facial Expressions of EmotionLaboratory studies have demonstrated that emotionally evocative stimuli reliably elicit discrete facial expressions of emotion when there is no reason for participants to manage or modify their expressions (Berenbaum & Oltmanns, 1992;Bonanno & Keltner, 2004;Camras, Oster, Campos, Miyake, & Bradshaw, 1992;Chesney, Ekman, Friesen, Black, & Hecker, 1990;Ekman, Davidson, & Friesen, 1990;Ekman, Friesen, & Ancoli, 1980;Ekman, Friesen, & O'Sullivan, 1988;Ekman, Matsumoto, & Friesen, 1997;Ellgring, 1986;Frank, Ekman, & Friesen, 1993;Gosselin, Kirouac, & Dore, 1995;Heller & Haynal, 1994;Keltner, Moffitt, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1995;Keltner & Bonanno, 1997;Rosenberg & Ekman, 1994;Ruch, 1993Ruch, , 1995. Field studies, howe...