評論
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Take a moment to look in a mirror. What do you see? Most of us would answer, "Myself."
花點兒時間照照鏡子，你看到了什么？我們大多數人會回答“我自己”。
My. Self. Our faces are the outer image we attach to our inner sense of self, to who we are and where we fit in the world. Faces root us in our culture, in the rituals and rules about how we present ourselves and how we see others. In some cultures, faces are veiled and hidden. Other cultures draw attention to faces with displays of tattoos, piercings, and scarification. In the contemporary world, faces are often a blank canvas to be manipulated with cosmetic surgery, injections, and intricate makeup techniques learned on YouTube. If we allow them to age, our faces will tell our life story. They connect us to the past in our ancestors and to the future in our children.
我們的臉代表著外在的形象，是我們內在的自我意識，可以讓我們知道自己是誰，以及我們在這個世界上的位置。臉孔根植于我們的文化中，根植于我們如何展現自我和如何看待他人的儀式和規則中。在某些文化中，臉上需要蒙著面紗隱藏起來。其他文化通過展示臉上的紋身、穿孔和劃痕來吸引人們的注意力。在當今世界，臉通常是一張空白的畫布，通過整容手術、注射和在YouTube上學習的復雜化妝技巧來操控。如果我們讓它們變老，我們的臉就會講述我們的人生故事。它們將我們與祖先的過去和孩子的未來聯系起來。
At the simplest level of identity, our faces function as our passport photo to the rest of the world. But they're also the way others seek to know us more deeply, to discover who we are behind that photo. "Appearance is the most public part of the self. It is our sacrament, the visible self that the world assumes to be a mirror of the invisible, inner self," wrote Harvard Medical School psychologist Nancy Etcoff in her book Survival of the Prettiest.
在最簡單的身份認同層面上，我們的臉就像護照照片一樣向世界展示我們自己。但它們也是其他人更深入了解我們的媒介，去發現照片背后、真正意義上的我們。哈佛醫學院心理學家南希·埃特考夫在她的書《Survival of the Prettiest》中寫道:“外表是自我最公開的部分，這是我們的圣禮，可見的自我，在這個世界上被認為是無形的、內在的自我鏡子。”
Whether the emotions we express with our faces are evolutionary adaptations or learned social behaviors is a topic hotly debated among social scientists. Charles Darwin argued in 1872 that facial expressions displaying some emotions are universal adaptations. In the late 1960s the psychologist Paul Ekman concluded that Darwin was correct. Human beings, across cultures, recognize specific facial displays associated with basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise.
我們用面部表情表達的情感是進化適應還是后天習得的社會行為，這是社會科學家激烈爭論的話題。查爾斯·達爾文曾在1872年提出過這樣的觀點：面部表情顯示出的某些情緒具有普遍適應性。20世紀60年代末，心理學家保羅·埃克曼得出結論，認定達爾文的觀點是正確的。不同文化背景下的人類都能識別出與基本情緒相關的特定面部表情，比如憤怒、厭惡、恐懼、喜悅、悲傷和驚訝等。
