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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