Alan Cowen

Overview

Alan Cowen is named in the Keltner-Huberman source as a computational emotion researcher whose large-scale video-analysis work helped expand the measured vocabulary of emotional expression across cultures.

Current Profile

Within this source, Cowen matters as evidence that emotion science has moved beyond the older six-expression taxonomy associated with Paul Ekman. Keltner cites Cowen’s computational work as finding substantial cross-cultural overlap across a broader set of expressions, including laughter, love, compassion, awe, embarrassment, shame, and pain.

Key Characteristics

• Represents the computational and large-scale video-analysis branch of emotion science in this source.
• Is used to support a broader taxonomy of emotional expression than the classical six-expression frame.
• Connects Awe Emotion to measurable expression rather than only subjective report.

Evidence

• Expression taxonomy: Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner says Keltner describes Cowen’s computational video work as finding cross-cultural overlap across roughly twenty emotional expressions.
• Awe relevance: Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner places awe among the expanded expressions discussed in that emotion-science lineage.

Qualifications

The page reflects only the Keltner-Huberman source note. It does not independently profile Cowen’s publications, affiliations, or complete research program.

What Changed

• Created the page to avoid a broken source-note wikilink and capture Cowen’s role in the emotion-expression taxonomy branch.

Relationships

• Dacher Keltner - source speaker who cites Cowen’s work.
• Paul Ekman - older facial-expression taxonomy used as the contrast point.
• Awe Emotion - one of the expanded emotional expressions connected to the source.
• Emotions as Functional Control States - adjacent wiki emotion-science framework.