It’s an important part of our socialization as humans to be able to read, interpret, and understand each others expressions. Even a vaguely perceptive person should be able to tell the different between someone being happy or angry from a familiar display of facial movements. Mind reading may not exist as such, but some people are able to seemingly read people’s minds through microexpressions – the sort of involuntary reactions we have, even for a second or less, that betray our true feelings.
Instinctively, we may be able to figure out basic emotions (and whether they are genuine – such as whether or not a person is “smiling with their eyes“), but what about when people are fighting or masking what they truly feel? Turns out we still can’t help but give clues. Becoming fluent in expressions is the basis of the TV show Lie to Me, in which Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) and his team assist in investigations through applied psychology.
You can also see just where you fall in the range of perception with this interesting facial expression quiz. How well did you do? Which ones had you stumped?
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I got 10/10 correct! I would be curious to find out the average success rate of those who took the test.
posted by ashley.paige on 7-29-2010 at 1:25 pm
Just finished reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell last night; the book talks a lot about this very topic. Thanks for the link!
posted by Karen on 7-29-2010 at 1:29 pm
Agree with ashley, I would be interested in seeing the average success rates of people tested. I got 8/10. I apparently have a hard time telling the difference between contempt and disgust.
posted by Kate on 7-29-2010 at 1:37 pm
Awesome! I’ve been meaning to read Blink, I need to move it up my list.
Ashley – I got 9/10, so I’m also interested to see what the average success rate is … maybe the test is too easy!
posted by Allison on 7-29-2010 at 1:45 pm
5/10 here…
posted by Lori on 7-29-2010 at 2:05 pm
allison – the test is not that easy! i only got 2 right. the rest of them i guessed like 3 or 4 times before getting the correct answer. i must be horrible at reading expressions!
and i also read blink. it was a very interesting read. i particularly liked the taste testing studies.
posted by tiffany on 7-29-2010 at 2:16 pm
Yay only missed 1! Number 7… I think it’s easiest if you go with your first instinct, and don’t over watch a clip.
posted by Celare on 7-29-2010 at 2:47 pm
8/10. I missed the first two because I thought they would be trick questions, but once I realized they weren’t, I got the rest easily.
posted by Jina on 7-29-2010 at 4:21 pm
people with aspbergers would fail this.
posted by dirk alan on 7-29-2010 at 4:21 pm
I always do really bad at these quizzes (4/10), but I can usually tell when a person is lying- i figure that is a more useful skill
Under my name is the quiz from the show Lie To Me, it has a micro expression part as well as other things to test if you are good at telling if people are lying
posted by Suz on 7-29-2010 at 5:44 pm
9/10 – I only missed the last one. I felt they were pretty easy myself.
I wonder if the ways we interact with other people affect our ability to judge the emotions. For example, I work with college-aged people – and I see quite a few of these expressions daily (especially contempt!)
posted by Sara on 7-29-2010 at 5:51 pm
I got 9/10… I confused disgust and anger on the last one.
posted by rikku on 7-29-2010 at 5:56 pm
10/10 They seemed so obvious to me…
posted by margaret on 7-29-2010 at 6:42 pm
I took the quizzes Suz linked to. Did okay, until I got to the fourth one. You’re supposed to try to tell the liars from those telling the truth, but I ran into some real trouble. The problem with that one is that it was clips from the show…actors. Who are essentially lying, even if they are decent actors. So I kinda wanna discount the results of that one. ;)
posted by kittycaller on 7-29-2010 at 9:58 pm
I can’t read the emotions unless I freeze the microexpressions. It’s one of the reasons I am horrible at reading people’s emotions from observation. I can only figure out what they’re feeling by talking to them. (Oh, and I have Aspberger’s, too).
posted by Tim S. on 7-30-2010 at 3:16 am
Maybe it’s because I did badly (I didn’t know you were supposed to be counting, but I probably only got 3 or 4 first go), but is this really scientific? It seems like the big changes like open-mouthed surprise wouldn’t be quite as fleeting. It kinda seems as much a test of whether you can rapidly process visual information as whether you can read emotions from people’s faces.
posted by Gwan on 7-30-2010 at 2:20 pm
wait a minute… the pictures are supposed to change?? i’m just seeing a picture, definitely no clips or changes or anything. stupid work computer settings. well now i don’t feel like such a bad judge of expression! i will have to try again when i get home!
posted by tiffany on 7-30-2010 at 5:39 pm
9/10 the last one is anger…. someone have do it rong, cuz if it was disgust her upper lip will be rased O_O
posted by fabio on 8-20-2010 at 6:37 am