March 30, 2008

30Mar08

Most people can generally read facial expressions to a degree that allows them to successfully interact with others. However, some, such as Paul Ekman, have essentially asserted that this reading of facial expressions may as well be more of a quantifiable, definable science. Paul Ekman, who we learned about in regards to his defining of six basic emotions (anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, happiness and fear) and his book, “Unmasking the Face,” it is interesting to delve a bit further into his thoughts of the science of reading facial expressions and understanding emotions. Ekman created a system to better categorize extremely specific facial expressions, in correspondence with a Wallace Friesan, referred to as the Facial Action Coding System. This was a huge compilation of pictures of all 43 facial muscles with their corresponding detailed descriptions, and the expressions caused by movement of these muscles. He, in fact, took this system to the CIA and offered to teach them how to read facial expressions, however his offer was politely declined. Nonetheless, his system is still used by many law enforcement officers as well as health care providers. Although he tell those who use this system to keep in mind to use it with hand gestures and speech, one must remember that the foundation is in fact in the muscle movement of the face. He stresses that in order to read facial expressions accurately, one must not necessarily look at the obvious expressions, but the fleeting, barely perceptible ones that pass through one’s face in flickers of time. These expressions, which he refers to as microexpressions, are what he believes to be the key to reading facial features. He does not deviate from the anatomical aspect of these expressions, through his theorizing. His claims are all based on the muscle workings in the face. For instance, he claims that a trained observer can determine whether an individual is sad before they may even realize that they are sad, through observation of the frontalis pars medalis muscle, near the eyebrow. If this muscle is raised, he asserts without doubt that this is a clear indication of the defined emotion of sadness. Ekman is a firm believer in the accuracy of the science of reading expressions, and considers himself an expression reader, which, on some level, brings others to deem him to be a lie expert. However, he also claims that he can turn off this ability easily, in interactions with his children and wife, for instance. It is interesting to think about whether or not Ekman’s theory is in fact true. Granted, movement of facial muscles is based entirely on biology. However, does the actual movement of these muscles directly reflect what one is feeling? If someone who does not even feel “sad” moves the frantalis pars medals muscle slightly, are we, as mere observers, entitlied to deem this person as “sad” indeed and assert that they simply are not aware of this sadness yet? How valid is this system of corresponding muscle movements with direct, defined emotions? This is difficult to determine, as although muscle movement may be strictly biological, emotions are beyond this limited realm of study. The combination of these two concepts, therefore, may or may not be able to be defined in the manner in which Ekman defines it, although even the FBI/CIA went back to Ekman and recruited him to interpret Osama bin Ladin’s emotions on videotape. This system seems to make sense to more and more people, however we must keep in mind that the study of facial expressions may not be so simple as to be able to give it solely biological causes.

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