Expressions: People around the world pull the same faces in similar social settings

Experts from the US used artificial intelligence to analyse the faces seen in 6 million YouTube videos -- broadly finding similar expressions in similar social settings. However, the team warned, the findings have not confirmed whether emotions themselves are universal, with further research needed to explore this area. Previous, survey-based studies into whether expressions and emotions are universal have been constrained by language barriers and small sample sizes. The study was undertaken by emotion scientist Alan Cowen of the University of California, Berkeley and his colleagues. The researchers used a type of artificial intelligence (AI) referred to as a deep neural network to analyse real-world behaviour in various social contexts across different cultures of the world. English-speaking volunteers in India trained the machine learning algorithm to identify 16 different patterns of facial movement associated with distinct English-language categories of emotion.