UCL study: Emotions are a universal language

A new study, led by UCL's Professor Sophie Scott, suggests that all humans share basic emotions such as amusement, anger, fear and sadness ' and vocalise them in similar ways. The results of the study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , provide further evidence that such emotions form a set of basic, evolved functions that are shared by all humans. While all humans are able to express a wide range of emotions through language, sounds, facial expressions and posture, the way that we communicate them is not always the same. In an attempt to find out if certain emotions are universal, the researchers conducted the study with two groups: one in Britain and one in Namibia to determine whether sounds associated with emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust and surprise are shared amongst different cultures. UCL's Dr Disa Sauter (UCL Psychology) studied a group of over 20,000 Himba, people living in small settlements in northern Namibia, as part of her PhD research at UCL. These study participants live completely traditional lives, with no electricity, running water, formal education, or any contact with people from other groups. Participants listened to a short story based on a particular emotion, for example, how a person was very sad because a relative of theirs had died recently.