When you're feeling one of those combination emotions, like sadly angry or happily disgusted, it shows on your face in a unique way, a new study shows.

    In fact, there may be at least three times more recognizable human facial expressions than previously thought, the researchers said.

    In a new study, researchers defined 21 facial expressions that we use to convey our emotions, and found that a computer model could tell them apart with a high degree of accuracy by looking for small changes in facial muscles.

    Among these facial expressions were the six, long-recognized basic emotions — happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised and disgusted — but also 15 others, which were a combination of these basic feelings. For example, a person may show that they feel happily surprised, or angrily surprised, said the researchers, calling such feelings compound emotions.

    This extended library of facial expressions of emotions may be useful in studying human brain and social communication, as well as in the design of computer systems that can communicate with humans, researchers said.

    "We've gone beyond facial expressions for simple emotions like 'happy' or 'sad.' We found a strong consistency in how people move their facial muscles to express 21 categories of emotions," said study researcher Aleix Martinez, a cognitive scientist and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University.

    In the study, the researchers took about 5,000 photographs of 230 college students who were asked to make faces in response to verbal cues such as, "You just got some great, unexpected news" or "You smell a bad odor."

    To determine which expressions were unique enough to be consistently distinguished from others, the researchers analyzed the photographs with a computer program called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Popularized by psychologists in the 1970s, FACS breaks a facial expression down into its elements, such as raised eyebrows or wrinkled nose, and analyzes the underlying muscle movements that are used to create that expression.

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

    精确

    jīngquè

    accuracy

    faithful measurement or representation of the truth; correctness; precision

    区分

    qūfēn

    tell apart

    discern or distinguish

    人类表情丰富超乎想象 共有21种

    一项新研究发现，当人们感受到复合情感时，例如悲愤或者开心又讨厌，这些情感就会以一种独特的方式呈现在脸上。

    研究人员表示，事实上，可识别的人类面部表情的数量至少是之前认为的三倍多。

    研究中，科学家定义了21种用于传递感情的面部表情，并发现，计算机模型可以区分面部肌肉的微变化，准确分辨这些表情。

    这些表情中，早为人知的六种基本情感是，喜悦、悲伤、害怕、愤怒、惊奇和厌恶。另外15种则是这些基本情感的组合。例如，可能表现出惊喜或者惊怒。研究人员将其统称为复合情感。

    对情感投射的面部表情进行这样的词汇扩充，有助于人脑和社会交流的研究工作、以及与人类交流的计算机系统的设计工作。

    “人类的面部表情早就不局限于表达像喜悦或者悲伤这样的简单感情了。我们发现，人们在运用面部肌肉表达21种表情时具有高度的一致性。”研究者亚历克斯·马丁内斯介绍说。他是俄亥俄州立大学电子与计算工程专业的副教授，一位认知学家。

    研究选择了230位大学生，要求他们根据提供的语言提示作出不同表情，然后将表情拍照记录，总共拍了大约5000张照片。语言提示诸如“你刚刚得知了出人意料的好消息”或者“你闻到了怪味。”

    为了确定哪些表情足够特别，能区分于其它表情，研究人员借助名为面部表情编码系统的计算机程序进行了数据分析。这种程序七十年代被心理学家广泛应用于研究。它将面部表情分解成小组分，例如挑眉、或者皱鼻，然后分析其中暗含的肌肉运动，正是这些肌肉运动导致了这种表情。