The 17 different ways your face conveys happiness

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Humans have more universal ways of expressing happiness than any other emotion, study finds

January 14, 2019

Neuroscience

Basic Research

Grantee

Panel of faces. What do you see in a face?

Human beings can configure their faces in thousands and thousands of ways to convey emotion, but only 35 expressions actually get the job done across cultures, a new study has found.

And while our faces can convey a multitude of emotions—from anger to sadness to riotous joy—the number of ways our faces can convey different emotions varies. Disgust, for example, needs just one facial expression to get its point across throughout the world. Happiness, on the other hand, has 17—a testament to the many varied forms of cheer, delight and contentedness.