July 12, 2004
Spot the Fake Smile
Avedon Carol points us to a nifty BBC Science & Nature quiz called Spot the Fake Smile. Quiztakers view brief Flash videoclips of people's faces as they smile. The challenge: determine whether the smile is real or fake.
Avedon picked the link up from Vincent Flanders' Web Pages That Suck
One of the best uses of Flash on the Web comes from the BBC and their "Spot the fake smile." You'll never look at a smile the same way again. I gave this little test to my friends and – surprise! surprise! – women scored better at finding the fake smile than men. It would be interesting to see how well professional poker players score on this test. I would hope they get them all correct. My score? 12 out of 20 correct. That's why I don't play poker for money (plus I can't bluff).
I'm not, strictly speaking, a professional poker player. I got only fifteen out of twenty correct ... but I plead a flaky connection. The Flash animations loaded quickly at first, and I did the first twelve perfectly. Then the downloads got real slow, and the Flash worked only intermittently; and I got only three of the remaining eight correct.
I might be a ringer though. The quiz is inspired by the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) of Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen. Malcolm Gladwell had profiled Ekman and FACS a couple of years back in the New Yorker. Gladwell's article made FACS sound like a poker players dream, vindicating Mike Caro, turning the art of reading tells into a science. I researched Ekman and FACS on the Web, and ultimately decided not to shell out the $260 needed to buy the FACS manual and investigators' guide, but not before learning enough to distinguish between an authentic smile with twinkling eyes and the phony grimace of the beauty queen waving to the crowd from the back of a convertible.
Posted by abostick at July 12, 2004 10:25 PMI got 14 out of 20, and should have done better, but I plead early morning.
Posted by: Debbie Notkin at July 13, 2004 09:41 AMHi Alan, interesting study. As a recreational poker player, I got 13 out of 20, which I thought was pretty good. I waffled on the last one and should've gone with my gut. It would be interesting to see what the average would be of poker players, maybe a new research study for BARGE?
Posted by: Michael mickdog Patterson at July 19, 2004 09:07 AMso.. been researching this.. would love the video training... got a 20 of 20 (for real, surprised me).. i find i always watch eyes and keyed to the corners of eyes (wrinkles) at the end they said the real sign was a lowered eye cover... i went back and tried again and found that only semi-true... any idea of how to get these videos as a student? (free as in free)
Posted by: asa at August 21, 2004 08:25 PM
