Links:

1. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/microexpressions/
2. https://www.eiagroup.com/facial-expressions-explored/
Published on: 16th April, 2018 by Harry
3. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/observation-skills/
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260796947_Handbook_on_Facial_Expression_of
_Emotion

Image Link:

https://studunnsdl.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/7-universal-emotions.jpg

https://www.apa.org/images/PSA-2011-05-matsumoto-fig1_tcm7-115934_w1024_n.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a5/17/c8/a517c8b52267408c1092727c15fc0c74.jpg

https://www.languageoftheface.com/uploads/2/5/9/8/25989307/_9741083.png

https://kasallman.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/micro.jpg

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/everyemotionhasanexpression-131031075207-
phpapp01/95/every-emotion-has-an-expression-5-638.jpg?cb=1383206825

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/653bd4_536968a6e69e42efa6e026023f087a97~mv2.png/v1/fill/
w_630,h_518,al_c,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/653bd4_536968a6e69e42efa6e026023f087a97~mv2.png

Content to Begin with:

Back in the late 1800’s Charles Darwin was the first person to suggest that facial expressions
of emotion are the same wherever you go in the world, that they are innate. At the time,
the majority of the scientific community disagreed with this theory.

It wasn’t until the late 20th century when Dr. Paul Ekman and his team did their research on
the universality of facial expressions, that we began to see substantial evidence that Charles
Darwin’s theory was indeed, correct.

Dr. Ekman’s Early Research

When Dr. Ekman began researching facial expressions of emotions across cultures, he

initially had the opposite view to Charles Darwin. Ekman believed that expressions were
socially learned, and therefore culturally variable. For instance, if you were born and raised
in America, you would display very different facial expressions of emotion than if you grew
up in Asia.

To finally put the argument to bed, Dr. Ekman set out on a research quest that would take
him around the world to study the facial expressions of many different cultures to see
if Darwin’s universality argument could be countered.
The first cultures Ekman studied were based in the following countries – Chile, Argentina,
Brazil, Japan and the United States.

Dr. Ekman’s initial study consisted of showing these groups of people photographs of
individuals displaying different facial expressions of emotion. He would then ask the groups
to judge what emotion they thought was being displayed in each photograph. The vast
majority of the individuals from the five cultures agreed.

While this was a big step towards Darwin’s view that expressions of emotion are
universal, Ekman was not fully convinced. He asked – ‘What if these five cultures had
all grown up watching the same movies and tv shows’? Could it be that the reason they all
agree is they have learned these expressions from the same place? Could the reason for
their agreement be their similar background and experiences? Learned from media or
actors for example?

To test this theory, Ekman came up with a solution. Why not go and find a culture that has
been completely isolated from the rest of the world. No TV, no magazines, no tourists? If
facial expressions of emotion were learned from parents and teachers, then surely a stone-
aged tribe would have an entirely different way of communicating emotion than those in
western societies?

This lead Ekman to the highlands of Papua New Guinea to meet a remote, primitive tribe
called the Fore. If the Fore tribe displayed and interpreted the facial expression of emotion
the same as their western counterparts, we would have substantial evidence of the
universality of facial expressions.

Equipped with a few simple stories and images of facial expressions, Ekman headed into the
remote camp and asked each of the tribesmen/women to match a story to an expression.

The tribesmen/women would then point to a photograph from a western face that they felt
would most likely be displayed on the face of the person in the story. This was later reversed
for westerners judging the Papua New Guinea faces.

Since Ekman’s pioneering study with the Fore tribe in 1969, there have

been countless other studies supporting his findings, and it is now widely
supported in the scientific community that Darwin was right and facial
expressions of felt emotions are indeed universal.

According to Darwin, there are few muscles which are impossible to activate voluntarily, and
these muscles reveal the true intentions of others. There are 7 characteristics such as
duration, symmetry, speed of onset and etc, which distinguish voluntary from involuntary
facial expressions. A liar may elicit an emotional cue which betrays the plausibility of the lie
itself. Micro expressions of emotions are typically represented in all these involuntary
classes.
Micro expressions occur due to involuntary facial muscles which are impossible to interfere
with and hard to feign them deliberately. The person who elicits micro expressions never
intends in fabricating/making them. Micro expressions or facial expressions of emotions are
thus highly informative.
Micro expressions are universal and flash on and off for less than a second in the face [14].
Micro expressions in general occur as peak experience or heated exchange.
Two major reasons for micro expressions occurrences are:
1. When a person tries to conceal or mask an emotion, then leakage occurs in the form of
micro expressions.
2. As Darwin suggested, micro expressions are also formed due to the involuntary muscle
actions.
Thus, micro expressions are the relevant sources where the emotions can truly be revealed.
Micro expressions help people in detecting lies and also helps in interpreting the persons
intentions and the world around. The actual problem starts with people finding it difficult to
recognize these micro expressions as they occur for a brief duration, with quick onsets and,
more dominantly at random and unexpected bursts. There are so many minute things that
go unnoticed, which requires keen observation skills and proficiency in deciphering them.

1. How can normal people with nominal observational skills can understand and
analyze these micro expressions of emotions?
Micro-Expressions are in fact hard to analyze in real time and with nominal
observational skills. People have practiced observing and learning them for years but
with limited success rates. This is due to the split-second occurrence of it by nature.
Slowing this reaction timing to an observable time-period shall enhance the success
rates drastically.
2. How to design a tool which not only helps investigators working on detection of lies,
but also helps people in understanding others around to make life simpler?
A tool is required to make people understand the emotion behind every
microexpression. Since every micro-expression is associated with its corresponding
Facial Action Units, continuously examining them and the micro-expression to derive the
emotion behind it is tedious. Therefore a system has to be designed which learns them
and estimates the emotion behind a micro-expression automatically. This would help
people in practicing the observing and estimating the exact emotion corresponding to a
micro-expression. The design of the tool and its working is discussed in detail in further
chapters.
 3. Can there be a technique which works without any physical contact with the subject
under test?
Yes. Facial cues offer a lot of information of the present state of the mind of a subject
under test. It requires a trained observation and experienced person to do this. We
attempt to create a neural network to do this estimation of the emotion behind the
micro-expression.
Link: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:830774/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Micro Expression:
Often misinterpreted or missed altogether
Occur in ½ a second or less
Unconsciously display a concealed emotion
Link: https://www.paulekman.com/resources/micro-expressions/

For micro-expression recognition: Database and suggestions:

Published: 20th September 2018

The time has come to look beyond fleeting, infrequent and minuscule emotional expressions to
movements themselves and not to their presence but their absence. Deception produces positive as
well as negative emotional experiences and sometimes no emotions at all. Felt emotions do not have
a one-to-one correspondence to outward expressions, and micro expressions are especially rare,
leading to false negatives and false positives. Discerning initial rigidity and temporal patterning of
facial behaviour may greatly increase the viability of facial movements in catching a liar.

How Reliable and Valid Are Microexpressions as Indicators of Deception?

High stakes circumstances may prompt some leakage, though not necessarily of microexpressions.
ten Brinke and Porter (2012) found that liars pleading for the return of their missing children
displayed more upper face surprise and lower face happiness than truthful pleaders, making these
expressions candidates for detecting deception. “The ‘grief' muscles (corrugator supercilii, depressor
anguli oris) were more often contracted in the faces of genuine than deceptive pleaders. Subtle
contraction of the zygomatic major (masking smiles) and full contraction of the frontalis (failed
attempts to appear sad) muscles were more commonly identified in the faces of deceptive pleaders”
[(ten Brinke et al., 2012), p. 411].

Contrariwise, Pentland et al. (2015) found during a Concealed Information Test (CIT) that deceptive
(guilty) respondents exhibited less contempt and more intense smiles than truthful (innocent)
respondents. Contempt and less intense smiling would be expected of liars, not truth-tellers.
Numerous studies have found that deceivers often show appeasement or fake smiles that can be
mistaken as signals of pleasure, comfort, or enjoyment. In their experiment comparing cheaters
(who lied) with cooperators (who were truthful), Okubo et al. (2012) concluded that, “cheater
detection based on the processing of negative facial expressions can be thwarted by a posed or fake
Learning to Be An Expert

These patterns would result in false positives. Thus, some expressions like smiling are not uniquely
associated with deception, and some emotional expressions—both micro and macro—can be
associated with either truth or deception.

Link : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01672/full

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 12)

There are a few “naturals” in the world that can read faces with nearly 100% accuracy and no
training: they just know. Look up Silvan Tomkins on the web. Psychologist and mentor to the modern
study of the face, he was an amazing face reader – some people say he was the best the world has
ever seen. For the rest of us, the good news is that we can learn it. Just about everyone can get the
basics with an hour of training. Like most things in life, in order to get really, really, really good
requires that you practice, practice, practice. Let’s break down a basic approach in this blog (and the
next two) to learning how to read faces.

Step 1: Learn What to Look For

Given that we’ve got 40 muscles in the face all moving independently of each other – with the
possibility of thousands of expressions – the first step is to understand the kind of information all
that moving around can provide. One caveat – remember that no matter how good we are at seeing
the signs, it is natural for us to apply our own cultural bias and judgments to what we are seeing. For
example in most western cultures, nodding the head up and down means “yes” and side to side
means “no”. But if you grew up in Pakistan, it is the opposite. Let’s say I am an American talking to a
visitor from Pakistan. I ask them if they are enjoying their stay in the U.S. They say “yes” and nod
their head from side to side. This will confuse me and I am likely to think that they are lying to me. It
looks odd: why would they say they liked something and shake their head “no” at the same time? In
reality they are not. It is simply that I am making a judgment about what I am seeing based on my
own cultural background. I don’t know that “yes,” means “no” and “no” means “yes” in Pakistan.

Link : https://www.humintell.com/2009/07/so-you-want-to-be-an-expert-1/

Article written by Stu Dunn

Facial expressions—including fear—may not be as universal as we thought

When you’re smiling, it may feel like the whole world is smiling with you, but a new study suggests
that some facial expressions may not be so universal. In fact, several expressions commonly
understood in the West—including one for fear—have very different meanings to one indigenous,
isolated society in Papua New Guinea. The new findings call into question some widely held tenets of
emotional theory, and they may undercut emerging technologies, like robots and artificial
intelligence programs tasked with reading people’s emotions.

For more than a century, scientists have wondered whether all humans experience the same basic
range of emotions—and if they do, whether they express them in the same way. In the 1870s, it was
the central question Charles Darwin explored in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
By the 1960s, emeritus psychologist Paul Ekman, then at the University of California (UC) in San
Francisco, had come up with an accepted methodology to explore this question. He showed pictures
of Westerners with different facial expressions to people living in isolated cultures, including in
Papua New Guinea, and then asked them what emotion was being conveyed. Ekman’s early
experiments appeared conclusive. From anger to happiness to sadness to surprise, facial expressions
seemed to be universally understood around the world, a biologically innate response to emotion.

That conclusion went virtually unchallenged for 50 years, and it still features prominently in many
psychology and anthropology textbooks, says James Russell, a psychologist at Boston College and
corresponding author of the recent study. But over the last few decades, scientists have begun
questioning the methodologies and assumptions of the earlier studies.

Psychologist Carlos Crivelli was one of them. In 2011, he was working with his colleague,
psychologist José-Miguel Fernández-Dols, at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Together, they
came up with a plan to investigate Ekman’s initial research in Papua New Guinea. Crivelli and
longtime friend and research partner, Sergio Jarillo, an anthropologist at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York City, traveled to the Trobriand Islands off Papua New Guinea’s east
coast, where about 60,000 indigenous Trobrianders live. These horticulturists and fishermen have
been historically isolated from both mainland Papua New Guinea and the outside world. To learn all
that they could, Crivelli and Jarillo embedded themselves in the local culture. They were adopted by
host families and took clan names; Crivelli became “Kelakasi” and Jarillo, “Tonogwa.” They spent
many months learning the local language, Kilivila.

When it came time to begin the study, they didn’t need translators or local guides. They simply
showed 72 young people between the ages of 9 and 15 from different villages photos from an
established set of faces used in psychological research. The researchers asked half the Trobrianders
to link each of the faces to an emotion from a list: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, or
hunger. The other half was given a different task.

Crivelli found that they matched smiling with happiness almost every time. Results for the other
combinations were mixed, though. For example, the Trobrianders just couldn’t widely agree on
which emotion a scowling face corresponded with. Some said this and some said that. It was the
same with the nose-scrunching, pouting, and a neutral expression. There was one facial expression,
though, that many of them did agree on: a wide-eyed, lips-parted gasping face (similar to above)
that Western cultures almost universally associate with fear and submission. The Trobrianders said it
looked “angry.”

Surprised, Crivelli showed a different set of Trobrianders the same faces, but he couched his
questions in stories—e.g., “Which of these people would like to start a fight?”—to draw out more
context. They, too, associated the gasp face with threatening behavior, Crivelli reports today in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The implications here are really big,” he says. “It
strongly suggests that at least these facial behaviors are not pancultural, but are instead culturally
specific.”
A young Trobriander from the village of Kaulaka points to a gasping face, indicating that he
recognizes it as a threat display.

A young Trobriander from the village of Kaulaka points to a gasping face, indicating that he
recognizes it as a threat display. CARLOS CRIVELLI AND SERGIO JARILLO

That’s not to say that emotions don’t elicit natural physiological reactions, Russell explains, but the
study suggests that reactions and interpretations can vary from culture to culture. With the gasp
face, for example, Russell speculates that the expression could be a natural response to urgent,
distressing situations. Whereas Western culture has tied that expression to feeling fear, it might be
that the Trobrianders associate the expression with instilling it. Crivelli agrees, and points to another
culture whose ritualized dances feature a similar expression in a threatening fashion: the Māori of
New Zealand.

Based on his research, Russell champions an idea he calls “minimal universality.” In it, the finite
number of ways that facial muscles can move creates a basic template of expressions that are then
filtered through culture to gain meaning. If this is indeed the case, such cultural diversity in facial
expressions will prove challenging to emerging technologies that aspire to decode and react to
human emotion, he says, such as emotion recognition software being designed to recognize when
people are lying or plotting violence.

“This is novel work and an interesting challenge to a tenet of the so-called universality thesis,” wrote
Disa Sauter, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, in an email. She adds that she’d like to
see the research replicated with adult participants, as well as with experiments that ask people to
produce a threatening or angry face, not just interpret photos of expressions. “It will be crucial to
test whether this pattern of ‘fear’ expressions being associated with anger/threat is found in the
production of facial expressions, since the universality thesis is primarily focused on production
rather than perception.”

Social psychologist Alan Fridlund at UC in Santa Barbara, says the researchers’ level of immersion in
the Trobrianders’ culture gives them a unique perspective on threat displays, and not relying on
translators improves the study’s accuracy. “I think the real strength of this paper is that it knows its
participants so well,” he says.

But he adds that the snapshot method may not be the best way to analyze how people view
different facial expressions—after all, in everyday life, people see facial expressions in the context of
what’s going on around them, he says. Another problem has to do with the study design
—“happiness” was the only positive emotion that Trobrianders were given as an option, Fridlund
says, which may have biased the results. For example, if the researchers had included “amusement”
or “contentment” as answers, the apparent agreement over smiling might have disappeared.

Despite agreeing broadly with the study’s conclusions, Fridlund doubts it will sway hardliners
convinced that emotions bubble forth from a common fount. Ekman’s school of thought, for
example, arose in the post–World War II era when people were seeking ideas that reinforced our
common humanity, Fridlund says. “I think it will not change people’s minds. People have very deep
reasons for adhering to either universality or cultural diversity.”

Link: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/facial-expressions-including-fear-may-not-be-
universal-we-thought

Article by Michael Price

Michael Price is a science journalist in San Diego, California

Oct 17th 2016.

Below are the 7 Micro Expressions:

1. Surprise Microexpression:
 The eyebrows are raised and curved
 Skin below the brow is stretched
 Horizontal wrinkles across the forehead
 Eyelids are opened, white of the eye showing above and below
 Jaw drops open and teeth are parted but there is no tension or stretching of the
mouth

2. Fear Microexpression:
 Eyebrows are raised and drawn together, usually in a flat line
 Wrinkles in the forehead are in the center between the eyebrows, not across
 Upper eyelid is raised, but the lower lid is tense and drawn up
 Eyes have the upper white showing, but not the lower white
 Mouth is open and lips are slightly tensed or stretched and drawn back

3. Disgust Microexpression:
 Upper eyelid is raised
 Lower lip is raised
 Nose is wrinkled
 Cheeks are raised
 Lines show below the lower eyelid
 This is the expression you make when you smell something bad.

4. Anger Microexpression:
 The eyebrows are lowered and drawn together
 Vertical lines appear between the eyebrows
 Lower lid is tensed
 Eyes are in hard stare or bulging
 Lips can be pressed firmly together, with corners down, or in a square shape as if
shouting
 Nostrils may be dilated
 The lower jaw juts out
 (All three facial areas must be engaged to not have any ambiguity)

5. Happiness Microexpression:
 Corners of the lips are drawn back and up
 Mouth may or may not be parted, teeth exposed
 A wrinkle runs from outer nose to outer lip
 Cheeks are raised
 Lower eyelid may show wrinkles or be tense
  Crow’s feet near the outside of the eyes

6. Sadness Microexpression:
 Inner corners of the eyebrows are drawn in and then up
 Skin below the eyebrows is triangulated, with inner corner up
 Corner of the lips are drawn down
 Jaw comes up
 Lower lip pouts out
 *This is the hardest microexpression to fake!

7. Contempt / Hate Microexpression:

 One side of the mouth is raised

Practice these emotions on yourself, and see if you can detect them in the people in your life.
Identifying the microexpression is only a piece of the puzzle. We want to help you understand each
of the expressions, specifically the science behind each emotion.

Link : https://www.scienceofpeople.com/microexpressions/

Non-Verbal Body Language

Face Expressions

Tone of Voice

Movement

Appearance

Eye contact

Gestures

Posture

Zones: Intimate, Personal, Social and Public

Shoulder shrug: Show that a person does not know or understand what you are talking about

Ring or OK: Means “All Correct”

Thumbs up: It is an ok signal normally, but when it is jerked sharply upwards it becomes an insult
signal

Congruence:
Submissive Palm position

Eye : https://www.psychologistworld.com/body-language/eyes

Tone of Voice:

https://www.psychologistworld.com/body-language/eyes

https://www.psychologistworld.com/body-language/eyes

Movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igv9R9jlosc

https://iedunote.com/nonverbal-communication

https://nosweatpublicspeaking.com/non-verbal-communication-element-5-body-movement/

Appearance:

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/personal-appearance.html

Body Language:

http://www.uob.edu.bh/en/images/offices/CareerCounsellingOffice/BodyLanguage.pdf

Body Language history:

Philosophers and scientists have connected human physical behaviour with meaning, mood and
personality for thousands of years, but only in living memory has the study of body language
become as sophisticated and detailed as it is today.

Body language studies and written works on the subject are very sparse until the mid-1900s. The
first known experts to consider aspects of body language were probably the ancient Greeks, notably
Hippocrates and Aristotle, through their interest in human personality and behaviour, and the
Romans, notably Cicero, relating gestures to feelings and communications. Much of this early
interest was in refining ideas about oration - speech-making - given its significance to leadership and
government.

Isolated studies of body language appeared in more recent times, for example Francis Bacon in
Advancement of Learning, 1605, explored gestures as reflection or extension of spoken
communications. John Bulwer's Natural History of the Hand published in 1644, considered hand
gestures. Gilbert Austin's Chironomia in 1806 looked at using gestures to improve speechmaking.

Eyes: Our eyes are a very significant aspect of the non-verbal signals we send to others. To a lesser
or greater extent we all 'read' people's eyes without knowing how or why, and this ability seems to
be inborn. Eyes - and especially our highly developed awareness of what we see in other people's
eyes - are incredible.
Signal: Looking Right

Possible Meaning: creating, fabricating, guessing, lying, storytelling

Signal: Looking Left

recalling, remembering, retrieving 'facts'

looking right and up: visual imagining, fabrication, lying