A recent study from the University of California, Berkeley examines why people differ in their ability to interpret others’ emotions during social interactions. The research, led by psychology Ph.D. student Jefferson Ortega and published in Nature Communications, suggests that these differences are linked to how individuals process facial expressions and contextual information.
The study involved 944 participants who watched a series of videos showing people in various emotional states. Some videos had blurred backgrounds while others had blurred faces, allowing researchers to separate the influence of facial cues from contextual clues such as location or bystanders’ reactions.
Ortega explained that most people tend to rely more on clear facial expressions when background context is ambiguous, and vice versa. This approach is known as Bayesian integration—a statistical method where different types of information are combined based on their clarity or ambiguity.
“We don’t know exactly why these differences occur,” said Ortega. “But the idea is that some people might use this more simplistic integration strategy because it’s less cognitively demanding, or it could also be due to underlying cognitive deficits.”
According to the findings, about 70% of participants used this nuanced approach, weighing ambiguities before making an assessment. However, roughly 30% relied on a simpler strategy—averaging the two cues without adjusting for ambiguity.
“It was very surprising,” Ortega said. “The computational mechanisms — the algorithm that the brain uses to do that — is not well understood. That’s where the motivation came for this paper. It’s just an amazing feat.”
David Whitney, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley who collaborated with Ortega on the project, noted: “Some observers are very good at integrating context and facial expressions to understand emotions. And some folks are not so good at it.”
Previous work from Whitney’s lab showed that even when a character is blurred out from a scene, people can still use context to infer emotions.
The research also connects with Ortega’s earlier studies involving individuals with traits associated with autism who may have difficulty combining details from faces and backgrounds effectively. This raises questions about what strategies these individuals use for processing social information.
“This work sets the foundation for investigating that in the future,” Ortega said.
The full paper can be accessed through Nature Communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-12345).
For more information about Jefferson Ortega’s research and David Whitney’s lab:
Jefferson Ortega’s website (https://jeffersonortega.com)
David Whitney’s lab website (https://whitneylab.berkeley.edu)
