Facial Expressions

Facial Expressions A new study has discovered that human faces only show four basic emotions. It also shows that how we understand these emotions depends on our cultural background. Until now, scientists have believed that there are six basic emotions that people from all cultures recognise. These are happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. Now, however, some scientists have challenged this view. Their study suggests that there are actually only four basic emotions. How people understand these depends on where they grow up. The study has been in the news a lot, because the team has created a new computer programme. This programme can be used to increase empathy and improve communication between different cultures. The main researcher, Dr. Rachael Jack, studied how people from different cultures decoded facial expressions, like a smile or a sad face. She wanted to know if facial expressions were the same everywhere. But she was surprised to find that they were not always the same. Some of the facial expressions were the same, but not all six of the basic emotions were recognised by everyone. “People from different countries understood the emotion from the face differently,” explained Dr. Rachael Jack, so she decided to find out more about the reasons for this. The team used a method from the 1970s called “Reverse Correlation”. The scientists began with Chinese people. They didn’t show one picture of someone showing “disgust” and then asked the people what the emotion was. Instead, they used their computer programme to show lots of different faces and then asked the people to point to the one that showed “disgust”. This helped the scientists get a much better idea of the differences between cultures. The computer programme could also recognise the difference between a natural facial expression and a facial expression in a photograph. This method showed that fear, surprise，anger, and disgust were often confused. Dr. Rachael Jack explained that facial expressions were related to biology and social situations. “This study shows which emotions we share, and which are different in different cultures,” said Dr. Rachael Jack, “Now, we know more about emotions and characters.” This can help us develop new communication technologies, for example using programmes like Skype. When you talk to a Japanese, a programme would “read” your facial expressions and then “translate” them for the Japanese. The Japanese would see the Japanese facial expressions on his screen. In this way, people from different cultures can understand each other better.