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Take a moment to look in a mirror. What do you see? Most of us would answer, "Myself."
花点儿时间照照镜子，你看到了什么？我们大多数人会回答“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.
我们的脸代表着外在的形象，是我们内在的自我意识，可以让我们知道自己是谁，以及我们在这个世界上的位置。脸孔根植于我们的文化中，根植于我们如何展现自我和如何看待他人的仪式和规则中。在某些文化中，脸上需要蒙着面纱隐藏起来。其他文化通过展示脸上的纹身、穿孔和划痕来吸引人们的注意力。在当今世界，脸通常是一张空白的画布，通过整容手术、注射和在YouTube上学习的复杂化妆技巧来操控。如果我们让它们变老，我们的脸就会讲述我们的人生故事。它们将我们与祖先的过去和孩子的未来联系起来。
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.
在最简单的身份认同层面上，我们的脸就像护照照片一样向世界展示我们自己。但它们也是其他人更深入了解我们的媒介，去发现照片背后、真正意义上的我们。哈佛医学院心理学家南希·埃特考夫在她的书《Survival of the Prettiest》中写道:“外表是自我最公开的部分，这是我们的圣礼，可见的自我，在这个世界上被认为是无形的、内在的自我镜子。”
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.
我们用面部表情表达的情感是进化适应还是后天习得的社会行为，这是社会科学家激烈争论的话题。查尔斯·达尔文曾在1872年提出过这样的观点：面部表情显示出的某些情绪具有普遍适应性。20世纪60年代末，心理学家保罗·埃克曼得出结论，认定达尔文的观点是正确的。不同文化背景下的人类都能识别出与基本情绪相关的特定面部表情，比如愤怒、厌恶、恐惧、喜悦、悲伤和惊讶等。
