Facial Expressions
Welcome dear participants to the fourth module of the second week.In this module, we would look at the facial expressions, what is their importance, whatare the basic types of facial expressions, and also, what is the latest research whichis going on in this direction.Our face is the most expressive part of our body.It is popularly known as an index of mind and normal perception is that our face displaysour emotions, our feelings in a very expressive manner and therefore, our facial expressionsserve a very significant social function of passing on exchanging and communicating socialinformation.This is a fundamental function of human society without which we cannot exists.I would like to quote Rachael Jack here, who has commented that “facial expressions havebeen the source of fascination as well as empirical investigation amongst philosophers,anthropologist, psychologist and biologist for over a century”.Our social interactions are dependent on the mutual understanding of emotions, withoutunderstanding the emotions we cannot interact with each other and coexist as a society.And this primary and fundamental function is performed with the help of our facial expressionswhich are considered to be potent signals of our true ideas and information which weoften want to pass on and sometimes, we want to hide from others.As for as a scientific investigation in this area of facial expressions was concerned,we have to acknowledge that Darwin was the first person to suggest the idea of the universalityof human emotions.In a treatise, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals which was published in1872, he had propounded this idea that the expression of emotions and feelings on humanface is universal in different societies.However, this idea was soon rejected by various other scientists.This idea was presented by Darwin in his third major work of evolutionary theory.The first book was On the Origin of a Species which was published in 1859, the second bookwas The Descent of Man which was published in 1871.In this book the expression of the emotions in man and animals which was published in1872, Darwin explored the animal origins of certain human characteristics and behaviors.For example, the lifting of the eye brows in moments of surprise and the mental confusionwhich typically accompanies blushing.It is interesting to note that for the preparation of this book Darwin had experimented techniquein terms of publication and verifying the psychological facts.He had circulated a questionnaire, during his preparatory research which had precededthe publication of this book.Another interesting aspect which is related with the publication of this book is the factthat he had insisted on putting certain photographs in the book.It is interesting to note that the art of photography was in its nascent face at thetime when Darwin was working.It was only in some preceding decades that people were experimenting with the basicsof what we today consider as photography art.The publication house as well as the publishers had insisted that people may not receive theinclusion of photographs in the text and had requested Darwin to avoid it.However, Darwin had insisted on including these photographs.The photographs which you can see on this slide are the illustration of grief from thisbook by Darwin.They are the original photographs which he had used in this book.The crucial argument which Darwin had proposed in this book was that the mental states areconnected to the neurological organization of physical movement.And I quote, “the young in the old of widely different races, both with man and animals,express the same state of mind by the same movements”.However, we find that not only the contemporary scientist, but also the anthropologist whowere working in the 20th century had rejected this idea.Among the prominent people who had rejected this idea we also have to mention the nameof Margaret Mead who is also known for otherwise path breaking research in the field of humanbehavior.However, this idea was taken up in the late 20th century by Paul Ekman and his team.Paul Ekman found support for the universality of a variety of facial expressions and foundthat these facial expressions which can be considered as universal are tied to particularemotions which include the emotions of joy, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust andcontempt.He also looked into the reasons of cultural variations and mentioned that several apparentdifferences in facial expressions among different cultures have to be considered as contextual.Paul Ekman had initially referred to six basic emotions.However, later on he revised his previous research and suggested that there are sevencommon universal facial expressions.And he had incorporated the idea of contempt in this list later on.The confusion whether the universal basic emotions are six or seven continued for sometime, but we find that this initial research was revised by Paul Ekman himself.And these basic expressions are associated with distinguishable patterns of muscularactivity.Researchers have also suggested that our facial expressions often match with the tonalityof our voice.In his studies Ekman and his team, had showed a series of photographs to various peoplewho belong to different cultures and these photos depicted six basic emotions.And the researchers later on found that people who lived in different societies in Western,Asian and Tribal cultures were very accurate in recognizing these basic emotions.It led him to believe that there is a universality in our facial expressions.However, there also has been a continued debate about the justification and validation ofthis universality argument which we would touch upon in our later discussions.University studies by Paul Ekman and his team and also by Crroll Izard have demonstratedhigh cross cultural agreement in judgments of emotions in faces by people in both literateand preliterate cultures.David Matsumoto and Hyi Sung Hwang have summarize history of critical developments which itis started in 1970s and supported the universalities studies by Ekman and his group.They have quoted Friesen, who has documented that the same facial expression of emotionswere produced spontaneously by members of very different cultures in reaction to emotion-elicitingfilms.And I quote from this study by David Matsumoto and Hyi Sung Hwang.Since, “then more than 30 studies examining judgments for facial expressions have replicatedthe universal recognition of emotion in the face.”A meta analysis of 168 data sets examining judgments of emotions in the face and othernonverbal stimuli indicated universal emotion recognition well above chance levels.Over 75 studies have demonstrated that these very same facial expressions are producedwhen emotions are elicited spontaneously.So, these studies validate the initial suggestions and findings by Paul Ekman and his group.Let’s look at what are these basic emotions and what type of muscular activity takes placewhen our face expresses them.The first universal emotion which has been mentioned by Ekman is happiness.It is an individual’s, self-reported evaluation of feelings of love or joy or pleasure andcontentment and it comes from several positive interactions within environmental stimuli.The research which is often cited in this context is by Wolf and Mass which is identifiedvarious facial expressions which convey a happy face.And these are a smile, wide eyes, lifted eyebrows; however, we would find that these physicalfeatures even though indicate what is normally perceived is happiness.Realities of what truly constitutes and contributes to happiness are much more complex and atthe same time they are also highly subjective.For example, for some people it is the materialistic positions which can create happiness whereas,for some other people it may be a non-materialistic achievement which would generate true happiness.So, the emotion of happiness is contextual; however, the expression of this emotion onour face can be easily recognized with the help of these physical features.The second emotion which they have identified as being universal is that of sadness of sorrow.It is produced from an array of instinctual feelings.For example, when somebody undergoes some type of a loss, personal grief, sufferingetcetera.However, it is also important to realize that the emotional state which is identified withit should be only temporary.A prolonged feeling of sorrow and unhappiness can also be a result of an emotional disorderlike depression and may require a different approach.By this emotion of sadness we normally interpret a particular emotion within a given context.It is also interesting to find that in various researches which have been conducted certaintype of gender bias and a reflection of social conditioning about understanding appropriatenessof gender roles is also visible.For example, I would refer to a particular study by Adolphs, which was conducted in 2002and which suggest that the expressions of sadness are mainly expressed more in womenthan men.In these type of researches we would find that the true situation of gender roles, thestereotypes etcetera have not been objectively viewed.Ekman, Friesen and Tomkins have listed main facial features of sadness as being.For example, dropping eyelids, lowered lips and cheeks, formation of tears and cornersof the mouth dropping downwards.These expressions which are portrayed for being sad are assisted through the contractionof the muscles around eyes and mouth.And the orbicularis oculi muscle forces the eyelids to drop and closed in response tothe formation of tears.The third universal emotion is that of fear.And as all of us understand it is one of the most distressing emotions.It is a response to a sense of thread danger or pain which may be either real or an imaginedone.It results into various physical responses on our face.For example, it can be same in wide open mouth which is formed by the raising of the upperlip which may indicate a desire either to escape or to have some more oxygen.Then forehead and eyebrows are wrinkled and pull towards the center of the face and lipsare also is stretched.However, the sense of fear which is reflected in our face is often associated with certainother physical symptoms.For example, increased rate of heart.Fourth universal emotion is anger, which is known as an ugly emotion and which can rangeanywhere from annoyance to an intense feeling of rage.And this is also associated with many negative feelings.For example, of being frustrated, feeling hurt, being disappointed in certain situation,feeling worried or feeling some type of an embarrassment.The main way a person communicates this emotion is through external expressions of the face.And there are prominent facial changes when a person feels anger.The eyebrows are lowered, the forehead is also creased, there is a wide exaggeratedmouth and the chain is also tight.The fifth universal emotion is that of surprise, which is a sudden feeling of astonishment.The facial expressions which are associated with this emotion reflect the unexpectednessof this emotion and therefore, we find that the facial features associated with the expressionof this particular emotion are perhaps the most dramatic and instantaneous.As it is an exaggerated emotion, we find that there are many ways in which it is expressedin an exaggerated manner by our facial features.Eyebrows are high and curved, on our forehead wrinkles may be formed and a wide open mouthis also formed by a dropped jaw.The sixth universally recognized emotion is disgust.It is more associated with the feelings of disliking somebody or something getting repulsedby an idea by a physical feature, by our surroundings etcetera or by being annoyed and it is a responseto the emotional stimulus which displeases a person in an intense manner.Main physical features are listed as a wrinkled nose, pressed lips and frowning of the forehead.The levator labii superioris muscle is the main facial contraction of disgust as it wrinklesthe nose and raises the upper lip to express feelings of dislike and revulsion.The seventh emotion which was added to the list of universally acknowledged emotionsby Paul Ekman was contempt.And we find that it is often reflected in what is popularly known as a smirk or onesided raise in the mouth.We find that contempt is also an important micro expression.Recent studies which are being conducted now have extended the view to combinations offacial expression and body posture and they have found evidence for cross culturally astable patterns of pride and shame as well.So, it is quite possible that we may also get evidence of some more emotions which maybe considered universal very shortly.In this list we find that there are cues for facial expressions as suggested by Ekman andFriesen.In the three columns, we find that after having listed the expression and the motion cues,the number of muscles which have been used for producing a particular motion on our faceare also listed.This is a very significant research by Ekman and Friesen, because we find that the latesttechnological developments in the area of robotics etcetera are also using this basicfinding by Ekman and Friesen.Later on, we would refer to this slide again.This is a very interesting video which looks at the seven types of universal facial expressionand explains them in a succinct manner.Field, there are over 10,000 micro expressions, but today we are only going to be talkingabout the seven major ones.So, number 1 is anger; the anger micro expression is found when someone pulls their eyebrowsdown and also purses their lip into a hard line.If you take a look at two people right before they enter a fight, like a bar fight or something,you will see this micro expression.Sometimes, you will even see them pull their chin up to display confidence, but pullingyour chin up is also a cue for aggression.The best way to read anger and someone else is to look for vertical lines between theireyebrows.It is good to look for this if you are giving someone orders or asking their opinions.Number 2, fear; for fear more of the whites of the eyes will be shown.Someone will raise their eyebrows, but their mouth will also be in a neutral position toeither scream or taking a big breath of oxygen.So, this all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.Your eyes go up to take in more light and see more and your mouth is ready to set upyour body for the fight or flight response, either to scream or to breath.So, if you scare someone or tell someone something that scares them, they will usually make thisface.Number 3 is happiness; happiness is a great micro expression nerine.So, basically happiness is just a big old smile.You can tell if it is a real smile if there are wrinkles around their eyes.Some people actually call these crows feet.Actually only 1 in about 10 people can cause these wrinkles on purpose.So, this is the best way to tell if someone is actually faking a smile or if they aregenuinely happy.So, if you tell someone good news, it is important to read their reaction; are they actuallyhappy that you beat your personal record or are they just in it to make you feel good.Also, this is a great sign if you are using a pick up line on a girl.By the way I give you 9 great unsaturated pick up lines as a bonus and the psychologyof attraction video course I just released.Link in the description.Number 4 is contempt; so, contempt which basically means hatred or guilt or unhappiness withsomething, is also a pretty easy read.It is basically just a smirk, when someone raises one side of their mouth up.Doctor John Gottman studied couples and he has found that when he sees the contempt microexpression in his therapy office there is a very high rate of divorce.If you see that one sided mouth raise and someone else near you, it is very importantthat you need to address something before its snowballs.Hate towards someone is something that is very hard to overcome, especially if it isbetween an intimate relationship.Number 5 is surprise.So, very similar to fear, but surprises when you drop your mouth down and your eyebrowsraise.The biggest difference between this and fear is that surprise causes your mouth to be loose,while fear the mouth is tensed.But you know that is going to be hard to tell by looking.So, in surprise another thing to notice is that the eyebrows are rounded, unlike in fearwhen they are usually straight.Now, this is caused by using different muscles in the forehead.It is very important to know the difference between these two.If you are asking someone about a secret and they show either one of these faces, you canfind out if they already knew.Maybe they already knew that someone was cheating on them or maybe you do not want them to knowyou already knew a co-worker was pregnant.Number 6 is sadness; now, sadness is the hardest to micro expression to fake.It really does take more muscles to frown than it does to smile.This means when you see sadness as a micro expression it is almost always true.If someone is sad the corner of their lips will curl down, which is where we get thefrown from.Usually sadness is a longer facial expression.Sometimes lasting more than even a couple seconds.Also, the inner parts of the eyebrow will push together, forming those vertical linesagain.Again, it is very difficult to fake this expression.Number 7 is disgust; disgust is when you smell poop or hear a really bad joke.The upper part of the lip will be pulled up, which basically causes your nose to flareout a little bit.Usually, someone’s eyebrows are tensed up a bit.Disgust is important, and it shows up in places that you would least expect it.You could ask your opinion about someone and they might show disgust.You can actually find out if someone does not like an idea that you are proposing oreven go as far as to say, if someone is thoughtfully racist, but they are not behaviorally racist.So, those are the seven major micro.In the beginning of this discussion we had looked at how there had been some debate whetherthe expression on our face is universal or is it determined by our cultural backgrounds.So, this debate has continued.Notions of universality were initially suggested by Ekman and Friesen and later on there hadbeen a large critical support for them.In the same manner we find that the idea that our facial expressions are socially learnthas been suggested by Margret Mead, Kleinberg and Labarre prominently.This idea has also received a lot of critical support.We find that increasing documentation of human behavior as well as anthropological researchesare creating awareness about those aspects of cultural behaviors which were previouslyconsidered to be instinctive, biological and common in humanity.Particularly, there are certain gestures which people have found.For example, the gestures indicating yes and no.Earlier it was thought that nodding a head is a universal gesture of agreement.However, there are certain societal sections, as well as certain cultural groups in whichthis gesture means something opposite.At the same time there are different greeting customs, some of them even violent and atthe same time we find that the expression of negative emotions is also not universal.In Japan as well as in many African communities we find that the negative emotion is normallynot expressed, rather people think that the negative expressions or negative feelingsand emotions have to be masked with his smiles and laughters, so that the other person youare talking to does not get in inkling of the personal grief.Basically, we find that our facial expressions and quote a certain message and this messageof a particular emotion has to be decoded by the other interact and so in a way theyfulfill a basic need of human beings to communicate.So, facial expressions, our gestures, our postures these aspects of nonverbal communication.Signal and decode information to accurately communicate a message.In this particular video, we find that cultural variations in certain aspects of our behaviorwhich was earlier considered to be universal are displayed in an interesting fashion.Every person on the planet feels emotions.You see emotions our feelings or thoughts that arise spontaneously instead of consciousthought.We look at this from a global perspective, the differences in how we interpret the expressionof emotions when they originate in other cultures.While this might not seem like a large issue or one would think that if a person is happyin China, they will show it the same way as if Americans do.The fact is different cultures interpret express experience emotions, expression of emotionsimilar to the research discussed earlier is different from country to country.For example, in some countries when a person passes away it is common for individuals toattend a funeral and show grief.However, in other countries it is expected that a person will be dispassionate and notshow grief.In this cultural setting, the emotion or the lack of it is how that culture expresses emotionwhen a person passes away.In Tahiti, if you are trying to tell a Tahitian that you are sad and ask a translator to translatethat into Tahitian, they will not be able to do so, as there is no word for sadnessin the Tahitian language.This absence of a word reflects that Tahitians do not typically express sadness.It is difficult for some united states to comprehend not expressing sadness at one pointor another, but the absence of the word and the Tahitian symbolizes that emotion is notexpressed in that culture.The absence of words, and thus the absence of emotional expression of those words, isfound in many other cultures.In Japan there is a word for someone who is worthy of praise overcoming a challenge.In the US there is no such single word for that.Another example is that Eskimos and the Chinese do not have a word their culture for anxiety.Thus, would be a challenge for Eskimos or the Chinese to express anxiety or interpretit in other.I would like to sum up the discussion of facial expressions by quoting again from Rachel Jack.In the article entitled Culture and Facial Expressions of Emotion which was publishedin 2013, a very valid point has been made.And I quote, “it is important at this stage to a step back from this specific debate andexamine facial expressions in a broader context”.So, we find that the idea of emotion communication has recently expended to those disciplineswhich were traditionally considered to be distinct from each other.For example, disciplines like engineering, robotics, as well as computer science arestudying facial expressions.As a result, the modern approaches to an examination of emotion communication using human faceare characterized by increasingly sophisticated methods that combine not only the knowledge,but also the techniques which have been imported from diverse feels.Ekman and Friesen have suggested cues for recognition of facial expressions, which Ihave listed in a previous slide.And these cues have become an important basis for creating convincing visuals as well ascreating animations in our contemporary world.In this very interesting research, we find that the basic findings of Paul Ekman etceterahave been used and bounding boxes for disgust and anger have been created.And it is an understanding of these bounding boxes that different facial features are createdto visually express this idea in our animations as well as in our visuals.The questions which nowadays we have to grapple as far as the expression of human emotionson our face is concerned are more rated with contemporary technological developments.Should companion robots and digital avatars be designed in such a fashion that they displaya set of facial expressions that are universally recognized.Or should they be tailored to express emotions in such a manner which are a specific to aparticular culture.Since such questions require a diverse knowledge from human communication and social interaction,as well as information processing and learning, we find that research in the field of nonverbalaspects of communication has become a rich source.In our next module we would continue this discussion by looking at micro and macro expressionson our facial features.Thank you.