Yesterday I posted a fun test of the emotional IQ and compared men with women. I showed everyone the pair of eyes below and asked them to say whether the person was sad, happy, angry, surprised or fearful. Can you identify the emotion from just the eyes? Answer after the break.
OK, here is the full picture…
The answer was happy. The voting was pretty much the same between the sexes, with about 38% of men and women getting the correct answer. Amazing how much people can detect from so little information. How did you do? Did you get it right?
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August 27, 2009 at 7:03 am |
Woohoo, I got it… wrong.
August 27, 2009 at 7:18 am |
Doesn’t 38% of people getting it right mean that people actually did worse than if they were just guessing (where you’d expect around 50%)?
August 27, 2009 at 7:50 am
there were 5 answers, so correct answer by random chance is only 20%
August 27, 2009 at 7:21 am |
OK, I have to call bullshit on this one.
First of all, 38% isn’t that impressive. Once you’d ruled out 1 or 2 of the possibilities that it definitely wasn’t (eg. surprise, anger), then the result isn’t much better than guessing. So I’m not convinced those who got it right were ‘doing’ anything, they just got lucky.
Secondly, I’m not completely convinced that is a genuine smile. And that makes all the difference. It is impossible to make the muscles around your eyes do what they do when you smile, voluntarily. That’s why everyone knows the difference between a genuine smile and a ‘McDonalds’ smile. Those eyes look very much the latter to me.
I’m open to being shown wrong, but based on the current information, I would say this yields exactly zero useful information about the way people perceive faces.
August 27, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I agree with the second point. Those eyes do not look like they are “smiling”.
August 27, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I also agree with the second point. Those eyes do not in the least bit look like a smile to me. I’m an artist, and while I may not be the best one in the litter, I’ve studied facial expressions quite a bit. When a person genuinely smiles, the smile creates little bulges under the eyes and lifts the lower lid a bit. In a lot of cases the lower lid will close a bit as well. Even genuine SUBTLE smiles will show these.
A good book on the subject is Gary Faigan’s “The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expressions. He covers pretty much all of the little things that make expressions what they are.
In the end I took about five minutes trying to decide which expression it could possibly BE, and I actually chose surprise because it was the only one I could even vaguely see it being. It definitely wasn’t fear, anger, or sadness, and lacked all of the signs of happiness AND surprise as well.
But those eyes portray more indifference than anything else to me.
August 27, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Carl
Get yourself a girlfriend
March 28, 2010 at 6:36 am
Agreed on all terms. Those eyes are NOT smiling.
To me they say exactly nothing, even with the complete picture.
I chose “fear” because i discarded the rest. Sadness displays oblique eyebrows, so we wouldn’t see that tip. Surprise rises the eyebrows. Anger rises the lower eyelid and wrinkles the space between the eyebrows. And happiness wrinkles the sides of the eyes.
Fear rises the eyelid and not the eyebrows. That’s not exactly what we see, but it was the closest.
If there a “not a fucking thing” option i would have voted that.
They should have tickled her.
March 28, 2010 at 6:38 am
I think she was afraid she’d be fired if she didn’t pose with a nice smile. U_U
August 27, 2009 at 7:42 am |
Damn. Knew I should have gone with my gut.
August 27, 2009 at 8:24 am |
In addition to possibly being a fake/surface/Botox smile, I’m not sure we can say all answers would be uniformly guessed such that 40% is unusual. That is, it might just be that people are more likely to go with “happy” when they can’t get a good read. I’d like to see a study that shows no bias before patting anyone on the back.
It’s also worth noting that both sexes had sad come in at #2 with about 30% and fear at #3 with 15%. Those *should* be about as far away as you can get from happy! Just another reason to think there is not as much amazing information detection as you might like to believe. About the only thing we can say from that data set is that anger was the easiest to rule out.
August 27, 2009 at 8:35 am
Yes, completely agree with this opinion
August 27, 2009 at 8:44 am |
Ok, I got it completely wrong and said sad….but it still doesn’t look a genuine smile to me (not that I profess to be any good at actually detecting emotion!). Richard – any comments on whether it is a genuine smile or a posed one?
August 27, 2009 at 8:48 am |
I was way off. Special pleading follows:
She’s posing for a photograph which means the smile is likely being put on. She might not be in the mood to smile but is effecting one for the occasion. If I’m not mistaken the telling factor in most circumstances where the facade doesn’t match the state of mind (ie happiness) is the eyes.
A better test is with a candid of someone showing emotion.
And now, after clumsily writing all that, I read the other replies. Could we replicate the experiment sometime with the above taken into consideration?
August 27, 2009 at 3:00 pm
it’s a valid point. Howevr, I imagine that for a photo to be useful in this experiment, it would need the person to be looking at the camera which will inevitabely be posed to some extent?
I would be interested to know how many people would have raised this same objection if another emotion had been used? In reality, the same limitations would apply, but personal experiences/social norms of (faking) smiles for a photo would not be so easily brought to mind.
August 27, 2009 at 9:20 am |
I didn’t see the original test but my immediate impression of the whole face is that it isn’t a genuine smile. It looks very posed, there aren’t the creases around the eye and almost squinting you see with a real smile. A lot of people also sort of scrunch up their nose a little when they’re really smiling.
August 27, 2009 at 9:23 am |
I agree with Vern.
Is she genuinely happy or just smiling?
Genuine happiness with a smile usually shows with crows feet wrinkles at the outer corner of the eye. In this picture they are not evident.
So, yes, she is smiling for the camera but is she genuinely happy?
August 27, 2009 at 9:23 am |
I still hold that she’s a little sad inside.
August 28, 2009 at 12:47 am
Seconded. Partly don’t want to be wrong, and partly for perfectly valid reasons
August 27, 2009 at 9:31 am |
Hurrah! First impression was definitely happy. I then read all the comments and zoomed back up and thought she might be angry. Just shows how easily swayed a person can be…
August 27, 2009 at 9:33 am |
I’m with Carl on this one. I wouldn’t say she looked “happy,” not by a longshot. She’s smiling and her full face shot looks, as just her eyes did to me, uncertain and insecure. So she could well be fearful. It was easy to guess the answer, though, as the other looks would have affected the eyes more, widening, narrowing, crinkling, whatever.
August 27, 2009 at 9:38 am |
Damn, I should have gone with my first thought!
August 27, 2009 at 10:04 am |
The girl’s eyes don’t seem straight. She’s actually looking at the camera, but I figured she was looking off into the distance — at something that was making her surprised. D’oh!
August 27, 2009 at 11:09 am |
I think that is more easy to identify feelings when the person is truly feeling that, a smile don’t mean that the person is really happy…
I though she was suprised, and maybe she was about the flash xD
Anyway… I think she is smiling and not happy. Only her mouth change :p
August 27, 2009 at 11:18 am |
The eyes seem very neutral to me; I assumed that this was a test of how males and females perceive such things differently.
I didn’t think she was happy, sad, frightened or angry so I went with surprised. If there had been a none of the above option, I would have gone with that. I still would.
August 27, 2009 at 11:24 am |
I guessed sad. She doesn’t look happy to me, even in the large photo.
August 27, 2009 at 12:18 pm |
What’s the point of this test?
August 27, 2009 at 12:41 pm |
I’m sure Richard has seen this before, but for those that doubt the validity of such testing, I think this completely nails the case…
Simon Baron Cohen (not sure if he’s related to Sascha!) devised a test to study autism in adults – autism making it difficult to read emotion obvioulsy. 36 pairs of eyes, and apparently even autistic adults will score 21 out of 36, with “normal” adults scoring 28-30 I believe.
Try it out! It’s a quick and fun test (although I note the “new” version has a slightly annoying interface.)
http://www.questionwritertracker.com/index.php/quiz/display?id=61&token=Z4MK3TKB
August 27, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I have asperger’s – was diagnosed in 1989 when I was eleven years old.
I scored twenty-seven in the above test.
During the test I experienced a combination of lucky guesses, unlucky guesses, being confident and right, and being confident and wrong.
My result should not surprise anyone. I can guarantee that they will not surprise anyone with experience working with ASD adults. Partly because such people are never surprised by anything, not even if a spaceship lands in the back garden and disguises itself as a rosebush, and partly because they are acutely aware that all stereotypes and generalisations are false.
August 27, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I got 28/36. I think I got almost all of the pictures of old men wrong.
September 22, 2009 at 5:09 am
Thanks for that link Steve. I got 32/36, most of which I didn’t even hesitate on. Not bad, IMO!
Just did the smile one from Elizabeth as well. 17/19! (I’m not counting the first one because I had hit play before the video had finished loading and thus wasn’t able to watch it once it really was loaded… stupid 56k.)
August 27, 2009 at 12:42 pm |
“obviously”
Argh. Hate typos.
August 27, 2009 at 1:06 pm |
@Steve Bent — that’s a great site.
To judge from eyes, you need a genuine full-face display of emotion. Found this BBC “spot the fake smile” site some time ago:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/
August 27, 2009 at 1:34 pm |
@Steve Bent
Did it and got 36/36. IN YOUR FACE people who say I’m ‘mildly autistic’. I think you’ll find I’m just your common or garden varity genius.
Incidently, I’m currently in Africa trying to visit every country in the world this year without flying. If you want to follow my process, go to http://www.theodysseyexpedition.com
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
August 27, 2009 at 1:38 pm |
I chose happy, because (just to verify!) I imagined these emotions, and found that happy was the only one where my eyebrows remained somewhat level – not furrowed or raised.
The model’s eyebrows can be seen slightly, and they look relaxed and level.
August 27, 2009 at 1:52 pm |
Nice!
Thanks to those on Twitter who retweeted the link.
@Graham Hughes – you must have cheated.
@Elizabeth – I found that smile test HARD!! They all looked fake to me and I was thinking about the conditions and how they implemented the test.
Interestingly seemed to judge it more on the before & after part of the smile, which is obvioulsy incorrect (hence my poor performance!!)
Good one though!
August 27, 2009 at 1:59 pm |
Funny, yesterday I didn’t see all these people going on and on on how bullshit they think this test is. It’s only when they are “proven wrong” that they think to criticize its flaws. Much like the contestants for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge.
August 27, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Why do you assume we’d be any less critical if we had guessed correctly? The test *wasn’t* BS yesterday because it was just a set of eyes that men/women might interpret different. Well it turns out that both men and women had about the same response. It also turns out that even the full face is fairly ambiguous when it comes to the *emotion* the person might actually be feeling. It’s not about anyone trying to rationalize being wrong, it’s about looking at how to improve the test so that an accurate difference in “emotional IQ” can be detected, if any such difference exists.
August 27, 2009 at 2:28 pm |
@Steve Bent
Bah! If I was a cheater I’d have flown to Sao Tome two bloomin’ weeks ago. As it is, I’m stuck in Port Mole, Libreville hanging around like a common dockside hooker. Only with more of a beard.
Urk – it stinks like a skip outside a Grimsby nightclub on a Sunday morning.
I did the BBC test a few years ago and did quite well on that too, but I seem to recall the conclusion was that I was tremendously aware of how others were feeling, yet I’m apparently too preoccupied with myself to actually care. All the ingredients of a sociopath if you ask me…
August 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm |
yep
August 27, 2009 at 3:16 pm |
How about running this experiment again, but with an unposed photo? I’m still not convinced this is a genuine smile — at least not an enthusiastic one.
August 27, 2009 at 4:23 pm |
It doesn’t really matter if it was a genuine smile or not; 38% detected that happiness was being conveyed. It would be nice to know if she was actually happy at the time of smiling though… The full face image doesn’t tell us for certain – which is interesting too.
August 27, 2009 at 10:23 pm
It may seem like too fine a point, but it is *critical* to the question whether or not she is actually happy, because the whole exercise was about reading the emotion and not judging her acting skill or how long ago she got Botox. Like I stated previously, it may very well be that a *neutral* expression would get 40% of the people to pick “happy” from that list. The bottom line is that we don’t know all the factors that could be contributing to the resulting distribution. Ultimately, if she wasn’t truly expressing happiness, people who “detected” happiness and gave the “correct” answer could be said to have a *worse* emotional IQ.
My own personal data point is that I started with a leaning towards happy, but I consciously checked myself. The whole point of the exercise seemed to be a search for a gender bias, so I found myself wondering if Richard wasn’t showing us a woman with a negative expression just to see if a man would be more likely to over-read a positive emotion. So I made an effort to look beyond my own bias, and I really looked for something in the eyes that supported one of the listed options. They’re really neutral eyes, so I ended up picking “surprise” as the closest thing to neutral, even though I stated at the time it still wasn’t a good fit.
September 8, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I went for ‘happy’ too at first and stuck with it since it was my immediate reaction. You are right though, the crux of it is whether she was truly happy or not at the moment when the photo was taken. But my thought was that she was…
A candid photo would have been better I guess, rather than this obviously posed one (though begin posed doesn’t mean it was necessarily a fake smile).
Is anyone happy these days?
(real semi-colon and right-bracket)
August 27, 2009 at 9:53 pm |
I did guess ‘happy’, however what I wud like to know is; if the eyes had been that of a male would the test result have been similar?
August 29, 2009 at 10:24 am |
I did guess “happy” yeah so the gut feel was right that is nice
September 9, 2009 at 3:26 pm |
This looks like a posed smile, so it’s not surprising there’s not much going on around the eyes. If it was a real smile, this would have been easier.
September 13, 2009 at 1:53 pm |
Yes, a young woman .. still a bit too much on the inside and def. not so happy in reality … they give people what I call the psychologist … it’s not their true selfes yet ..
Funny how both eyes show different emotions/stuff … the two brain halves in people’s faces … I’ve always found that quite interesting .. you can sense a lot about some things in their lifes from that .. some struggles and why they are the way they are … It’s good that we have two brain halves … that’s for sure ….. imagine those people if you combine two same brain halves .. to one ….. Only from looking at them you already start to foresee something not so good for them …
January 2, 2010 at 9:18 pm |
I was right, surprisingly. I quickly examined the are between the eyebrow, it seemed relaxed, eliminating sadness and anger. Cheek bone tissue and lower eyelids seemed tense and firm eliminating fear which would cause stretching of these areas due to an open mouth. And if it were a surprised look the eyes would be open much wider.
September 16, 2010 at 2:24 pm |
I was wrong. I thought anger because her eyes seemed tensed up and shiny. This was fun though, thanks!