The beginning of the twentieth century has been crossed in the humanities and social movement by which science does not end up recovering. : Behaviorism.
For John Watson (1) (1878-1958), only what is observable by a third person can be studied scientifically. In fact behind this maxim sensible, hiding a reality that she was a little less. one that wants that human behavior (English
Behavior ), can be observed that once excluded feelings, consciousness, generally mind, simply because the mind not observed.
He will have to wait nearly a century for the conscience, whose headquarters is located in the brain, is finally being taken seriously because it can also be observed. To take one example, a person who looks in the mirror and did not recognize, shows a number of lesions detected by MRI, the stroke seat of the self-consciousness is in the right hemisphere. Everything seemed to happen
point to clear links between the brain and body can be established, there is finally possible, specifically by observing body movements systematically classified and indexed, linking them to brain function, and see a stream of research appear, working on the basis of observation of the face and body.
But here that the observation of the mind is still postponed indefinitely by a form of neo-behaviorism that dare not speak its name, which suggests that the observation of bodily or cultural attitudes! ... and therefore can not be considered as such ...
pretext that some symbolic gestures are strictly cultural study of the dynamic body would lose interest.
Good .... how then can we explain that a series Korean 겨울 연가 (French
Winter Sonata ), originally produced for South Korea and the Asian market is being bought on the planet. For anyone who has seen an episode of this series, it seems pretty obvious that the emotions expressed by Asian players, to their countrymen, there are the same as those expressed by the West. Besides, if the body language was not universal Kurosawa would be the first surprise of global success of his cinema!
We let you meditate in front of a photograph of Asian child at the beginning of the article. If you see the facial expression or expression difference with the joy of a Western child, we would be interested to know that ....
And finally a word of advice, be careful if you are a parent of teenagers, some teenagers develop among themselves a "teen language" that is to say a number of gestures misunderstood by adults, so be careful that tells you that you can not understand your children because they have different culture than you!
(1) JB Watson and R. RAYNER,
Conditioned emotional relationships, in Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 3, p. 114, 1920.
Left click on these 2 pictures to enlarge 
