{
  "id": 15939016,
  "title": "What faces in paintings can tell us about how we perceive emotion",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/21/what-faces-in-paintings-can-tell-us-about-how-we-perceive-emotion",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-21T19:40:16.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phys.org",
    "slug": "phys-org",
    "url": "https://phys.org/news/2026-10-emotion.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "When observing a face in a painting, many people may initially assume they know the emotion being displayed. However, new research reveals that interpretations of facial expressions in art can be more nuanced than expected. To investigate this, psychologists from an international team selected 116 faces from European paintings spanning from the 1400s to the 1900s. After standardizing the images, they presented these isolated faces to 152 participants, who then selected the emotion they believed best represented each expression from a list of six basic emotions. The study found that while some faces consistently produced a clear consensus on a single emotion, others elicited responses across two or three emotional categories. For example, the painting \"Joan of Arc\" by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1879) showed varied interpretations when the context was removed, with participants most often identifying fear but also noting potential sadness or surprise. The study suggests that paintings offer a rich source of varied facial expressions for exploring how people perceive emotions beyond clear-cut displays.",
  "summary": "Look closely at a face in a painting and you might think you know what emotion the person is experiencing. A smile suggests happiness. A furrowed brow might signal anger. Widened eyes could mean fear or surprise. But what happens when you ask lots of people the same question? Do they see the same emotion, or something more complicated?",
  "key_points": [
    "Paintings show nuanced facial emotion interpretations beyond basic emotions.",
    "International team studied 116 faces from European paintings 1400s-1900s.",
    "Context-free paintings revealed varied emotional responses in participants."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}