And here it is again...

How many of these shots have we seen now from press conferences involving some sort of accusation or resignation. What exactly is this expression? How many shots do the photographers need to take and sort through before they nail it -- is it an ongoing expression, or fleeting? Is it spontaneous, or an expression assumed to attempt to mask another?

This shot of Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis announcing his resignation seems to be the classic illustration for these stories. I can only assume photo editors know what they want to convey when they pick it. Let's take it apart:

The first thing you may notice is the pulled down mouth corners and downcast eyes -- but does the rest of his face look sad? The inner corners of his eyes are drawn in and down, they aren't lifting in and up like in a typical sad expression. His lips are drawn completely inside his mouth and pressed tightly together, and like the eyebrows, that's a strong indication of anger.

Could the intense clamping of the lips and the downward/no-eye contact gaze be an indication of an intense anger that must at all costs be restrained? A stony mask to wear during one of the more painful and infuriating experiences of your life? An attempt to appear serious and appropriately concerned when in fact extremely aggravated? What do you see?

Not-So-Neutral Neutral Faces

The April Edition of the Journal Emotion is full of wonderful "face-based" research. One that particularly caught my eye was how having a neutral face that has some of the features of a facial expression can affect the way you are perceived, rather strikingly:

Structural resemblance to emotional expressions predicts evaluation of emotionally neutral faces. Said, C., et. al.

People make trait inferences based on facial appearance despite little evidence that these inferences accurately reflect personality. The authors tested the hypothesis that these inferences are driven in part by structural resemblance to emotional expressions. The authors first had participants judge emotionally neutral faces on a set of trait dimensions. The authors then submitted the face images to a Bayesian network classifier trained to detect emotional expressions. By using a classifier, the authors can show that neutral faces perceived to possess various personality traits contain objective resemblance to emotional expression. In general, neutral faces that are perceived to have positive valence resemble happiness, faces that are perceived to have negative valence resemble disgust and fear, and faces that are perceived to be threatening resemble anger. These results support the idea that trait inferences are in part the result of an overgeneralization of emotion recognition systems. Under this hypothesis, emotion recognition systems, which typically extract accurate information about a person's emotional state, are engaged during the perception of neutral faces that bear subtle resemblance to emotional expressions. These emotions could then be misattributed as traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Those of you who took the workshop may remember a couple of the Ekman Microexpressions Training Tool faces that already had a strong "sad" or one-sided "contempt" neutral expression, and some participants stated that they found those faces confusing. Do you know of people who have identifiable "emotional expressions" in their neutral faces? Has it ever affected the way you interact with them?

Sad expressions

Heidi definitely is feeling sorry for herself in the jungle.

Most of Brett's face is neutral, but his lips are pulled down strongly in a classic sad expression.

Casey Anthony has her brows pushing upward, causing the horizontal wrinkles to appear in her forehead. The visible side of her mouth shows the end of the lips being pulled down just like Brett above. It's possible that the pull is being counteracted by her chin and lips pressing together--perhaps an attempt on her part to keep quiet despite her crying.