Humans are emotional beings, showing feelings in our behavior and facial expressions. But whether these mean the same thing in different cultures has been hotly debated. Now a new study has found that in different social contexts, such as weddings, funerals and sports, people indeed show universal facial expressions.
For the new study, Alan Cowen’s team used a machine learning model, Deep Neural Network (DNN), to systematically analyze facial expressions in thousands of different contexts. These contexts come from more than six million videos uploaded to You Tube between July 2009 and May 2018 by people in 144 countries.
Facial expressions were rated by English speakers in India by selecting applicable emotions from a list of 31 labels, resulting in a total of 16 distinct facial expressions. Meanwhile, contexts were classified in a separate experiment. The results showed that people from different cultures share about 70% of the facial expressions used in response to different social and emotional situations.
“This supports Darwin’s theory that expressing emotions in our faces is universal among humans,” the study co-lead author Dacher Keltner said. “The physical display of our emotions may define who we are as a species, enhancing our communication and cooperation skills and ensuring our survival.”
However, Lisa Barrett, from the Northeastern University College of Science notes that the English speakers in India were given the emotional word ratings rather than labeling the expressions themselves. They used emotion labels such as “anger”, “fear” and “sadness” instead of descriptive terms, thereby inferring the emotions behind the expressions.
She further comments that the raters (评定者) saw the faces in contexts which can’t necessarily be separated from the emotions themselves, and that the key point is that the raters are from just one country. “The ultimate value of Cowen and his colleagues’ study might lie not in the answers it provides,” she concludes, “but in the opportunity for further discovery that it opens up.”
【小题1】What can we learn from the text?A.The study is opposite to Darwin’s theory. |
B.People in different cultures show similar facial expressions. |
C.The team conducted the study by downloading facial expressions. |
D.Facial expressions and contexts were classified in the same experiment. |
A.By using a learning machine. |
B.By uploading videos to YouTube. |
C.By analyzing facial expressions. |
D.By using emotion labels. |
A.Social success is dependent on facial expressions. |
B.Facial expressions have constantly changed over time. |
C.Social skills reflect the ability of one’s expression management. |
D.Facial expressions play a vital role in humans’ development. |
A.Objective. | B.Ambiguous. | C.Critical. | D.Contradictory. |