Facial Action Coding System Inspired Tutorial.-khappucino

Based on the research of Paul Ekman, Charles Darwin, and Duchennede Balogne. (See the “Facial Action Coding System: Megan Fox Editionfor the specific action units mentioned here)I’ve generated a set of CGI faces with various facial expressions onthem and have included some explanations about the facial actionunits in use. The application I used to generate the faces is calledFACEGEN.A key concept developed by Paul Ekman is the concept of‘microexpressions’, fleeting expressions that are flashed acrossyour face involuntarily for about 1/5 of a second. Since you cannotcontrol them they are a tool used in lie detection.For more information on the ‘REAL’ Facial Action Coding Systemcheck this link out.http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/face/www/facs.htm If you would like to purchase the real facs system, you can do so byfollowing this link.http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/facs/new_version.jsp Paul Ekman’s personal website can be found here.http://www.paulekman.com/ I would highly recommend the ‘MicroExpression training’ providedvia the paul ekman website if you are interested in refining yourability to read people.

The Smile

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The smile is an elusive expression because it is commonly flashed forpoliteness or to conform to social norms/rules. (Asians tend tosmile when they are upset) Paul Ekman calls these Display Rules.What you will notice in common between the polite and the truesmile is that both use action unit 12 (The lip corner puller).The lip edges are lifted towards the ears.The main difference between the polite and the real smile is thecontraction of the eye muscles that surround the eye socket. This iscalled action unit 6 (The Cheek Raiser). For instance some peoplewill display ‘laugh lines’ or ‘crows feet’ when they smile. The outerparts of the eye tend to be pulled down. Thus the Eyes also smilewhen you truly smile, in terms of actually having joy while yousmile.What is interesting about the eye related muscles is that apparentlythey are involuntary in most people. Thus the only way to fake areal smile is to think about something that you would actually smileabout, then flash a smile.For a bit of history, the true smile is also called the duchennesmile. This was a French neurologist who did experiments withelectrical stimulation of the face. When he told the model to smilehe got the Action Unit 12 smile, but when he told the patient a joke,the patient generated an eye muscle contraction in addition to thelip corner raiser muscle.

Anger

Anger is an expression that comes in several combinations thatinvolve the inner eyebrow muscles and sometimes the flashing ofteeth. This particular example I chose because it captured thecommon muscle action unit that occurs for both open and closedmouth versions of anger.The action unit that in question is action unit 4 (The brow lowerer).As you can see in the above picture, the inner eyebrow is loweredand brought closer together. The key action here is the convergingof the eyebrows in a downward direction.Anger is an interesting expression. while I was completing my mba Icame across an article in a consumer behavior class that stated thatthere was an asymmetric recognition of the anger emotion. I believethis article was from the ‘economist’. Men and women in generalappear to be much more sensitive to the facial expression of anger.Specifically they can pick out anger faster than the other emotions.What is interesting is that men apparently can spot anger fasterthan women, and that in general anger on a male face was easier tospot than on a female face. There are some arguments that it wasperhaps a good thing to be able to spot angry males in order to avoidthem or sense their intentions.