Oprah's audience shows fear before learning about their surprise

Click the title to go to Entertainment Weekly's site showing pictures of audience members when they learned that they were getting "a big surprise", but they didn't yet know WHAT. There are lots of classic fear expressions in the photos. Why? Well, many reasons. If I jump in front of you and announce that I've got " a BIG surprise for you...", all sorts of thoughts are going to fly through your head. Is it a GOOD surprise? With Oprah, I think anyone would assume she's giving out good surprises, but good is always in the eye of the beholder. Also, they drew out the tension for all it was worth, giving everyone time for their adrenaline to build up to maximum levels (and be ready to explode with joy once the surprise was announced).

Follow the link and check out the pictures!

Botox--no wrinkles, no emotions?

Check out this article on MSNBC.com discussing a link between reduced facial movement (because of Botox or Restylane injections) and reduced emotions! Click the post title above to read the story!

No picture today, but...

Check out this article in the Wall Street Journal about lying in children and adults. It's fascinating!

Survival of the Fibbest: Why We Lie So Well

By Shirley S. Wang
Wall Street Journal Online


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703880304575236171715034884.html?mod=WSJ_article_RecentColumns

When You CAN'T Read Their Face

The New York Times today has a wonderful set of features on Moebius Syndrome, which is a form of congenital facial paralysis that renders people unable to move their faces to express emotion.  What does that mean for their ability to read emotion in the faces of others?  How do they express their own?  And why might they be better at detecting falsehood?  Read the article to find out, and be sure to view the audio slideshow narrated by a social worker with Moebius.  They've also included a podcast on the science.

The Lips Say It All!

Check out this video of a local TV reporter getting angry when not yet off the air -- from what I can see the telepromoter must be down and he was struggling to read from notes.  Watch for the masked grimaces as he reads them, and then right toward the end, watch the face transform into pure rage.

Can you identify the look on the anchor's face as they return to studio?*




*note the pulled back lips and widened eyes -- classic fear face!

We know nobody wants wrinkles....

But, before you do anything rash, check out the celebrity plastic surgery photo gallery on MSNBC.com today! They have over 20 "then and now" pictures of celebrities, with a plastic surgeon pointing out where various procedures might have been done. Take a look and see how facial expressions can be altered by surgical procedures. www.msnbc.com

Facial Profiling

When does facial expression reading bleed over into facial profiling? Dr. Paul Ekman and other experts in the field of facial movement and expression are consistent in their message - you should see a person's neutral face, their baseline expressions, BEFORE you attempt to draw much conclusion from static photos, in particular.

And yet some research seems to point to people being able to predict some personality features by looking at pictures of faces. What's going on here? Is "facial profiling" ever reasonable, ever fair?

Slate Magazine has a great article on the subject:

But today, physiognomy is making a comeback. In the last decade, breakthroughs in 3-D modeling and animation software have opened up the field. At the same time, ideas from genetics and evolutionary psychology are reanimating old debates about biological determinism, race and gender differences, and why humans possess the faces and bodies that we do.

The new research suggests we are more skilled at "reading faces" than we knew. People are surprisingly adept at assessing sexual orientation from headshots. Five-year-olds can predict election outcomes based on photos of the candidates. We can even guess whether a face belongs to a Democrat or a Republican at a rate better than chance, according to a forthcoming study out of Princeton.