At the start of my first year of my stay at IISER Bhopal as a junior, I was concerned about the behavior of my senior students. When a senior bothered me while I was steadily walking to class, I used to raise my upper lip, squint my eyes (to protect them), my chicks would get puffy, my shoulders would heave, my chest would swell. As I moved forward, my abdomen contracted. back, arms moved forward to protect my chest and abdomen, leg tendons were stretched in case I had to run away - anyway, I gave him a friendly smile. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Our friendly gesture contains at least all of the above moves, most of which we are unaware of. It's a defensive strategy. Other gestures like laughing and crying also contain a similar set of physical movements. “Why are we doing this? » “What is the real reason behind all emotional expressions like smiling, laughing, crying? " etc. are some of the questions that have always intrigued scientists. across the world. At first, theorists believed that these gestures were simply expressions of our inner emotions formed due to external stimuli and should vary among different cultures around the world. But Charles Darwin argued that opposing emotions triggered a somewhat similar set of physical movements that are common across different cultures. all humans on earth (also common to animals). They must therefore be inherited from our common ancestor. After that, theorists began to search for the evolutionary origin of laughter, smiling and crying. In 1960, American psychologist Edward Hall pointed out that every human has a personal imaginary bubble or zone of solitude around him or her that is typically 3 to 2 feet wide. It is wider around the head and narrows towards the legs. If someone enters this human bubble, different receptors on the surface of their body are triggered and trigger defensive reflex actions. This bubble is an evolutionary adaptation. It is for the safety of a person. How do my reflex actions during the encounters mentioned above favor me? The key to this puzzle lies in the term “information”. We must consider the above situation as an encounter between two human ancestors like chimpanzees. How I feel about the senior is expressed through my defensive actions when he enters my bubble. I said to him, “I fear you and submit.” I express my point of view to the social superior and I can influence his decisions. He gets information about my emotional state. It is in his interest to plan his response. He nods at me and leaves. (original answers varied between older people). If I had stood straight, it would have been like, “I’m not afraid of you.” This analogy is superficial and exaggerated, the actual processes occurring in the brain and body and their expressions during the above interactions are very complex. The smile is only an imitation of this defensive position. Laughter shows various emotions. We laugh when someone makes a joke, we laugh in sarcasm, we laugh to congratulate someone, etc. It involves the same physical moments except that dry smile. This is a special type of smile, known as a Duchenne smile, in which the muscles around our eyes contract too much. We laugh while appreciating someone in a way like: “you are right in this mental battle, I surrender to you”. The above meanings can..