Media release

From: The Royal Society

Human sickness detection is not dependent on cultural experience
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Animals can detect early cues of infection in conspecifics, thereby reducing the risk of contamination. It is unknown, however, if humans can detect cues of sickness in people belonging to communities with whom they have no or limited experience. A new study shows that humans across the world, from hunter-gatherers to urban dwellers, can detect that an individual is sick from the face alone, even when the face belongs to a person from a community with whom they have no or minimal social contact. Importantly, experience with people from the community does not enhance detection capacity suggesting that facial sickness detection does not require culture-specific experience.