Human beings can configure their faces in thousands and thousands of ways to convey emotion, but only 35 expressions actually get the job done across cultures, a new study has found.
Human beings can configure their faces in thousands and thousands of ways to convey emotion, but only 35 expressions actually get the job done across cultures, a new study has found.
And while our faces can convey a multitude of emotions—from anger to sadness to riotous joy—the number of ways our faces can convey different emotions varies. Disgust, for example, needs just one facial expression to get its point across throughout the world. Happiness, on the other hand, has 17—a testament to the many varied forms of cheer, delight and contentedness.
“This was delightful to discover,” said Aleix Martinez, cognitive scientist, professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University, and study co-author, “because it speaks to the complex nature of happiness.”
The differences in how our faces convey happiness can be as simple as the size of our smiles or the crinkles near our eyes, the study found.
Read more at Ohio State University
Photo credit: RyanMcGuire via Pixabay
