How we read emotions on other people's faces may say more about us than it does about them, a new study suggests. Experts found the cues that we use to judge the emotion behind a facial expression can vary highly from person to person. This is a dramatic departure from previous scientific understanding, which said the ability to identify six key emotions –anger, disgust, happiness, fear, sadness, and surprise – was universal across cultures and genetically hard-wired in humans. However, the latest results shows everyone conceptualises emotions differently within their own minds, making it more difficult to read how other people are feeling. For example, some people might find it hard to differentiate between sadness and anger if they associate both these emotions with actions like crying, shouting, or slamming fists on the table.

Rob High, IBM Fellow, VP and chief technology officer for Watson, showed how IBM's Watson cognitive computing technology can tease out the sadness and anger in a particularly hackneyed dating profile - or teach a robot to playfully dance in response to a teasing question - during a keynote Wednesday at our GPU Technology Conference.