A Smile at a Wedding, a Cheer at a Soccer Game Are Alike the World Over

Using video and considering context is “absolutely a step forward” for the field, says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor and psychologist at Northeastern University, who wrote an accompanying commentary on the study. “The question that they’re asking strikes right at the heart of the nature of emotion,” she remarks, but there’s a risk that such information might be used to judge people, which “would be premature because there are multiple ways to interpret these results.”