Many of us teaching high school psychology have discussed Paul Ekman's classic studies on the universality of facial expressions and emotions. Professor Sophie Scott from the University College London, along with Disa Sauter, has published a study trying to determine if specific sounds associated with a given emotion are the same between different cultures of the world.

Dr Sauter studied subjects in Britain and northern Namibia. While they found commonality with some emotional sounds, they did find it true for all forms of emotions.

To read a ScienceDaily article, Everybody Laughs, Everybody Cries: Researchers Identify Universal Emotions, go tohttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100125173234.htm

For a previous THSP Blog posting on Paul Ekman's work on facial expressions go to http://teachinghighschoolpsychology.blogspot.com/2010/02/paul-ekmans-website.html