Facial expressions are one of the most powerful tools for human social communication. However, understanding facial expression communication is challenging due to their sheer number and complexity. Here, I present a program of work designed to address this challenge using a combination of social and cultural psychology, vision science, data-driven psychophysical methods, mathematical psychology, and 3D dynamic computer graphics. Across several studies, I will present work that precisely characterizes how facial expressions of emotion are signaled and decoded within and across cultures, and shows that cross-cultural emotion communication comprises four, not six, main categories. I will also highlight how this work has the potential to inform the design of socially and culturally intelligent robots.

Speaker: Dr. Rachael Jack is a Lecturer in the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow. Her work focuses on human social communication – i.e., how people transmit and decode signals (e.g., facial expressions) for social interaction – with particular focus on cross-cultural communication. Her interdisciplinary approach combines traditionally distinct fields, such as psychophysics, social psychology, and information theory

Rachael Jack & Philippe Schyns

Rachael Jack et Philippe Schyns sont deux figures proéminentes du monde de la psychologie et des neurosciences cognitives, et des pionniers de l'approche dite de 'reverse corrélation' et de l'utilisation d'outils computationnels pour la recherche en cognition et neurosciences sociales. Leurs travaux sont pour l'instant dans le domaine de la cognition visuelle (ex. expressions faciales http://www.pnas.org/content/109/19/7241), qu'ils visent à étendre dans le domaine auditif.