Comments on: I can see for smiles and smiles

I can see for smiles and smiles

seanyboy — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 01:54:22 -0800

Spot the fake smiles. Can you tell the difference between a fake smile and a real smile?

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 01:54:53 -0800

17/20 - not bad.

By: spazzm

spazzm — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 02:16:29 -0800

Number 13 is a vampire, right?

By: ikalliom

ikalliom — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 02:24:09 -0800

Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling 19/20 - so this is why I don't get along with other people?

By: joedan

joedan — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 02:54:43 -0800

damn, i only got 12. maybe that stripper didn't really like me...

By: condour75

condour75 — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 03:50:45 -0800

17/20. Watch those laughlines.

By: Goofyy

Goofyy — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 04:46:26 -0800

14/20. The next question: Did you mistake more fake for genuine, or genuine as fake? My mistakes were equal in both directions.

By: biffa

biffa — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:13:23 -0800

16, thought some of the genuines were easier to spot as they often look away rather than directly into camera. Tended to fail on genuines who stared at you, and like condour didn't show any crinkling around the eyes either.

By: armoured-ant

armoured-ant — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:22:24 -0800

18/20. I'm just a sensitive guy...

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:36:41 -0800

15/20. Maybe I'm not so bad at judging people as fakes. Maybe.

By: dirt

dirt — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:41:26 -0800

19/20... The #13 Vampire tricked me. (But, that's one of their abilities..)

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:46:30 -0800

I suck. I got 9/10. By far, I did better on the genuine ones -- I tended to think everyone was genuine. I didn't assume there were 10 of each kind, but I was starting to wonder why I picked so many genuines, but I honestly couldn't tell most of the fakes. Apparently I do have some problems with this. I was irritated that the page says "Most people are surprisingly bad" but doesn't tell us what the average score is.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:48:03 -0800

Oops, that's 9/20 not 9/10. I scored worse than random chance. :(

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 05:59:30 -0800

Definitely a vampire.

By: bendybendy

bendybendy — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 07:20:36 -0800

12/20. But I knew I'd suck. I found the expression before the smile very hard to overcome- the happier they'd look at the start of the clip, the more genuine they'd appear to me. I also found myself trying to keep the balance at 50% fake.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 07:31:54 -0800

17/20...on viewing the ones I got wrong a second time, I would change two of my votes, but the other one STILL looks fake to me.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 07:39:31 -0800

I got 19/20...but, I was a bartender for a very long time...and I'd put my ability to know what people are thinking and feeling up against almost any psychologist. ;) And yes, 13 was just freaking spooky.

By: Frank Grimes

Frank Grimes — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 08:06:45 -0800

11/20. I'm still trying to figure out if #13 was a man or a woman.

By: paisley

paisley — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 08:27:52 -0800

20/20. I guess I do have at least one people skill, after all.

By: Fofer

Fofer — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 08:38:11 -0800

14/20. Part of me was stuck on this notion that all of them were fake. I mean, let's be real here. There in some stuffy lab, getting paid $5 to laugh at some stodgy scientist's bad jokes. "Okay Mr. Scientist and his ass-kissing assistant, here's a real smile for you, can I go now?"

By: kindall

kindall — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 08:52:15 -0800

If you "fake a smile" by thinking about something that makes you happy, is it really fake?

By: thomascrown

thomascrown — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 08:58:06 -0800

I aced it, though I actually took a couple of classes back in my neuroscience undergrad days that covered FACS (the system this study used to differentiate between real and fake). Interestingly, FACS can be gamed. With a bit of practice, several of us learned to fake smile well enough that we'd qualify as the real thing. Should you wish to do the same: 1. Try a convincing fake smile in front of the mirror. Yep, no crows-feet crinkle, eyebrow dip or eyelid thickening. 2. Now try convincing fake laughter, actually haha-ing out loud. Odds are, the smile you produce as part of the laugh looks remarkably real. 3. On to the practice part. Over time, try and reduce how much you have to laugh to get that real-looking fake smile. Eventually, you can get to the point where just a forceful exhale (the very first part of a laugh) is enough to push your fake smile into apparently genuine territory. Keep the exhale small and quiet enough and you can muster up fake smiles that pass the FACS check at will. You'd all best work on it before the next MeFi meetup. Otherwise, armed with new knowledge from this FPP, people will quickly realize how dull you think they all are.

By: hnnrs

hnnrs — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 09:01:22 -0800

8/20 only becuase the site totally freaked me out. it has to be single scariest thing i've ever seen. al those dead eyes and bad teeth...

By: ascullion

ascullion — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 09:21:49 -0800

They all had such bad teeth.. people in Britain don't really have bad teeth, honest. Oh, and 15/20 - and I immediately thought the same as ikalliom

By: qDot

qDot — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 10:42:53 -0800

14/20. I just watched the eyes mostly, but as the blurb at the end said, that doesn't always work. God, the teeth, THE TEETH!

By: deborah

deborah — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 10:49:47 -0800

18/20. The two I got wrong I guessed fake when genuine was correct. Suspicious of my fellow humans, I guess.

By: trigfunctions

trigfunctions — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 10:52:09 -0800

13/20 . Not to promote stereotypes, but did some of those videos remind anyone else of The Big Book of British Smiles from the Simpsons?

By: sharksandwich

sharksandwich — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:02:46 -0800

Finally reaffirming my suspicions that those pasty-faced island-Nazis are up to "something".

By: Skwirl

Skwirl — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:04:04 -0800

Hm. Fake smiles. Why does everything on MeFi right now remind me of my ex-girlfriend? (Because I'm bitter and obsessed, that's why. PS: 10/20, 'splains a lot)

By: Aaorn

Aaorn — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:38:11 -0800

16/20. Three of my four errors were on fakes, so I guess I err on the side of trusting.

By: abcde

abcde — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:41:09 -0800

17/20.

By: wilberforce

wilberforce — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 11:56:28 -0800

18/20 - what worries me is that I put that I was vaguely optimistic, in general. But the two I got wrong were genuine smiles that I decided were dastardly fakers! What kind of cynic am I? I console myself with the fact that they had funny shaped faces that meant that their eye folds didn't move like the other people's.

By: FidelDonson

FidelDonson — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 12:01:06 -0800

Thank you thomascrown - that brought a smile to my face!

By: Jade Dragon

Jade Dragon — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 18:30:50 -0800

I got 18/20. I've always watched for the eyes and a combination of the body movement and breathing... Guess it works for me most of the time!

By: spatula

spatula — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 18:49:37 -0800

Malcolm Gladwell of the New Yorker wrote a nice piece on the FACS system and Ekman in particular. Pretty long but it's a good read.

By: micropublishery

micropublishery — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 20:40:45 -0800

Due the set-up questions, I thought the quiz was really about whether you're an optimist or pessimist! I "realized" this about half-way through and thought maybe they were all genuine. So I resisted the "fake" temptation from then on. Not good for my optimism level...

By: Ynoxas

Ynoxas — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:23:57 -0800

14/20, and I had equal distribution of fake/real misses. ON a side note, those are quite simply some of the ugliest people I have ever seen. I *strongly* suspect the researchers purposefully chose less attractive people so that their looks did not influence the results. I've always considered myself stunningly average looking. Compared to those blokes I'm practically a god. P.S. #13 is a woman. A frightening woman, but a woman none-the-less.

By: davehat

davehat — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 02:23:54 -0800

Holy crap. Number 15 is an old flatmate of mine. Hi Dan! I only got 14/20. I did get the vampire guy right though.

By: Ogre Lawless

Ogre Lawless — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 15:30:26 -0800

We need more places where you can get smiled at 20 times in less than five minutes.

By: Spencerinc

Spencerinc — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 16:40:45 -0800

17/20 Not bad. This was a great site. The ones I missed were all genuine smiles which I thought were fake. Guess I'm quick to think people are just faking laughing at my jokes and just made that assumption here too.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 16:47:13 -0800

18/20. The two I got wrong were fakes that fooled me. I'd rather be faked out than think a genuine smile was false....

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 21:18:35 -0800

....trailing post; 17/20 I had a bad start. But man, after looking at those people, I couldn't help but laugh, I thought it was a joke. WHICH made me think more about fake a real smiles. (those cats just weren't even average looking. Oh, wait, bbc).

By: premiumpolar

premiumpolar — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 06:51:07 -0800

This might be a horrible thing for me to say, but the vampire woman looks like a skinny version of my foster son's biological mother.

By: orange swan

orange swan — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:20:53 -0800

17/20. Although I thought I was doing really badly.