Deep learning reveals what facial expressions mean to people in different cultures

Highlights•We trained a deep neural network to predict the culture-specific meanings of facial expressions•We gathered 423,193 facial expressions from 5,833 participants in 6 countries•Participants rated each expression in their own language in terms of 48 emotions•We uncovered 28 distinct dimensions of facial expression, with 21 showing cultural universalitySummaryCross-cultural studies of the meaning of facial expressions have largely focused on judgments of small sets of stereotypical images by small numbers of people. Here, we used large-scale data collection and machine learning to map what facial expressions convey in six countries. Using a mimicry paradigm, 5,833 participants formed facial expressions found in 4,659 naturalistic images, resulting in 423,193 participant-generated facial expressions. In their own language, participants also rated each expression in terms of 48 emotions and mental states. A deep neural network tasked with predicting the culture-specific meanings people attributed to facial movements while ignoring physical appearance and context discovered 28 distinct dimensions of facial expression, with 21 dimensions showing strong evidence of universality and the remainder showing varying degrees of cultural specificity. These results capture the underlying dimensions of the meanings of facial expressions within and across cultures in unprecedented detail.