Sometimes people add to what they say even when they don't talk. Gestures are the “silent language” of every culture. 【小题1】 .

In the United States, people greet each other with a handshake in a formal introduction. The handshake must be firm. 【小题2】 Friends may place a hand on the other's arm or shoulder, some people, usually women, greet a friend with a hug.

【小题3】 . When two people talk to each other, they usually stand about two and a half feet away and at an angle, so they are not facing each other directly. Americans get uncomfortable when a person stands too close. They will move back to have their space. If Americans touch another person by accident, they say, “Pardon me” or “Excuse me.” 【小题4】 . If you don't do so, it means you are bored, hiding something, or are not interested. But when you stare at someone, it is not polite.

For Americans, thumbs - up means yes, very good, or well done. Thumbs - down means the opposite. To call a waiter raise one hand to head level or above. To show you want the cheek, make a movement with your hands as if you are signing a piece of paper. 【小题5】 Americans shake their first finger at children when they scold them and pat them on the head when they admire them.

Body language, especially gestures, varies among cultures. For example, a nod of the head means “yes” to most of us. 【小题1】 Likewise, a sign for OK, forming a circle with our forefinger and thumb, means zero in France and money in Japan. 【小题2】

Folded arms signal pride in Finland, but disrespect in Fiji. The number of bows that the Japanese exchange on greeting each other, as well as the length and the depth of the bows, signals the social status each party feels towards each other.

Italians might think you’re bored unless you use a lot of gestures during discussions. Many Americanmen sit with their legs crossed with one ankle resting over the opposite knee. 【小题3】

Likewise, Americans consider eye contact very important, often not trusting someone who is afraid to look at you in the eye. But in Japan and many Latin American countries, keeping the eyes lowered is a sign of respect. 【小题4】

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.”