There is a growing interest in the fields of nonverbal communication and emotion recognition, specifically microexpressions.

People interested in the  field of deception detection and facial expressions of emotion as well as nonverbal communication skills and are asking how do I apply these types of techniques in the real world?  What types of professions is this applicable for?

Well, Psychology Today has answered that call with a review of a new book Nonverbal Communication:  Science and Applications written by Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang as well as SUNY Buffalo’s Dr. Mark Frank.

The article goes on to write that the new book blends nonverbal communication research with how professionals have used this knowledge to excel in their profession.  This includes law, negotiation, medical, marketing and many more…

It includes research chapters with ample citations that are complimented later on in the book with chapters on personal reflections of professionals that can be applied to the reader regardless of their profession.

 Jeff Thompson, author of the article interviewed Dr. Matsumoto:

Q:  To start things off, why did you, along with Mark Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang, write this book?

A:  [DM] We created this book because there was a gap in the available books. Many are for scientists that don’t really translate how the scientific work can be translated into practice. Others are by practitioners, with sometimes little or no nod to the science, and in some cases discussing NVBs that have not been validated. We wrote this book so that scientists could appreciate the practical use of research, and practitioners could appreciate the science behind validated NVB indicators.

Q:  You explain the functions of nonverbal communication as it being able to 1) define communication, 2) regulate verbal communication, and 3) be the message itself.  Can you explain what these mean?

A:  [DM] As stated in Chapter 1, NVC serves to provide a context for communication, sometimes commenting on words. A quick smile, for instance, when discussing the disappearance of one’s children, provides additional info that defines the communication. Our voices, faces, and head gestures regulate turn-taking in conversations. And these all occur without words sometime, and thus the NVB becomes the main message themselves.

Q:  What are some common misconceptions about nonverbal communication?

A: [DM] The big misconception about NVB and deception is that averting one’s gaze or fidgeting is associated with lying. This belief is held across cultures. Studies have tested this hypothesis, and most do not support it. It is a myth. 

To read more from Dr. Matsumoto’s interview click here.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed that people have a greater reaction to emotional words and phrases in their native (first) language. This is further proven by the fact that people speak to their infants and children in their first language despite living in a country which speaks another language and despite fluency in the second.

MedicalXpress.com reported that previous research has shown that emotion affects basic brain functions such as attention, memory and motor skills but this new research suggests that it also affects higher brain processing functions like language and understanding.

Their research purports that emotions can shut down high-level mental processes without our knowledge.  Researchers used their past research findings that bilinguals subconsciously access their first language when reading in their second language and and took that a step further.

They discovered that our brain shuts down the same unconscious access to out native language when faced with negative words such as war and unfortunate.

“We devised this experiment to unravel the unconscious interactions between the processing of emotional content and access to the native language system. We think we’ve identified, for the first time, the mechanism by which emotion controls fundamental thought processes outside consciousness.  Perhaps this is a process that resembles the mental repression mechanism that people have theorized about but never previously located,” reported Dr. Yan Jing Wu of the Bangor University’s School of Psychology.

What do you think of these new findings? Are you bilingual, does this seem to be the case for you?

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Humintell would love to get a broad perspective especially from people who are bilingual!

Take a look at this video and the facial expressions of Dan Majerle at a Diamondback’s game against the Giants May  12th.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are your thoughts on Dan’s expression?

Great footage. Good job Dan!!

Take a look at the two videos below. In both videos, parents are making emotional pleas for their missing children to return safely. One is telling the truth and one is lying.

Can you figure out which one? How do their facial expressions differ? Is one showing something that the other is not?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Take a look at the time lapsed video below:

This is a life portrait of Frans Hofmeester’s (a Dutch man) daughter from age 0 -12.  His video is getting world-wide attention.  CNN posted it, Jay Leno joked about it & ColdPlay re-tweeted it.

Hofmeester’s comment, “I noticed a subtle change in the way she looked,” he recalls. “She wasn’t the same as the week before that. I thought, I have to capture this image otherwise I will forget what she looked like.”

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Marketing departments are now able to capitalize on that more than ever due to the fast pace and growth of technology.

Human’s basic emotions regulate the things we do, what we buy and even what we are willing to tolerate (e.g. pay rate, product prices etc).

CNET/Reviews comments on the future of marketing and car building.   Toyota is beginning production on a mood facial recognition tracking system that they will place in the dashboard of their vehicles. This system will customize the electronics of the vehicle to the drivers specifications. 

What does this mean on the practical applications side of this technology?

Well, if your car thinks you might be angry or sad, the system will increase the alert time it gives you.  Thus giving you more time to react to a possible collision.

The possible down side to this, is simply that Big Brother is watching.  The technology could be integrated with other vehicle electronics systems to block phone calls or limit speed if it senses that the driver is under stress.

The question for consumers and the public in general is,  is safety more important than freedom?  Also, how much safety is really necessary before our freedom is compromised?

Toyota is not the only car maker capitalizing on such technology. Audi has a similar type of system in the works.  Other industries are also implementing emotion recognition in an effort to improve their products and marketing.

Samsung has recently applied for an emotional recognition patent.

According to Phys.org the South Korean conglomerate’s patent is on a device that will be able to tell a users emotions based on their facial expressions or action units (AUS).   AUS ‘are components of a facial action coding system which was specially programmed to reference the contractions of facial muscles.

For a previous blog post regarding this same topic, take a look here

A recent MythBuster episode focused on the 7 basic facial expressions of emotion by revealing only the eyes and had a battle between the sexes.

Science has proven that there are 7 basic emotions that are universal across all people of all cultures.

They are: Anger, Contempt, Fear, Sadness, Surprise, Disgust, and Happiness

Research has documented that all people – regardless of race, culture, ethnicity, age, gender or religion – express these emotions in the face in exactly the same ways.

When reading body language, knowing how to detect micro facial expressions is very beneficial especially when trying to delineate the veracity of a person’s words in combination with their body language.

How does one delineate between these basic facial expressions of emotion?

There are a few things to take into account and if you are very well versed in detecting facial expressions, especially micro facial expressions, and then you can detect all of these at once or individually:

• eyebrow movement
• lip/ jaw pursing/tightening
• eye lid movement (lifted up or down)
• bridge of the nose movement

Many professionals use the FACS coding system to determine the specific muscles that are moving with each facial expression of emotion. The system has corresponding AUs (action units) to label each muscle that moves, along with it’s intensity.

The short MythBusters video below shows how difficult it can be to determine what facial expression delineates what emotion especially when viewing ONLY the eyes.

The task becomes even more difficult when these expressions are flashing on and off the face in fractions of a second such as in real world interactions.

Perhaps the participants in the show would have done better if they had taken our microexpression or subtle expression training…

The face of technology is widening to include not only the well educated scientist, but the ordinary artistic entrepreneur, and Daito Manabe and his team of technologists and musicians, are among the latest group of “researchers” to take electrocution to the level of an art form.

Below is an interesting video that explores the human face, and cutting edge technology.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Created by researcher and programmer Daito Manabe and Satoru Higa, Happy Halloween is one of Manabe’s experiments.

Manabe used FaceTracker, a sophisticated but user-friendly face tracking system, to detect the movements of his face in real time, and superimpose onto it features that turn him into an ever-changing hybridized being.

Manabe and his collaborators have also experimented with facial electrical stimulation controlled by a computer.  They synchronized individual and groups of faces into a mildly painful ballet that resembles various facial expressions.

Perhaps this preliminary experiment can be further tested and applied to robotic facial technology for more life like avatars.

In Face Visualizer (below), he syncs up four friends, Muryo Honma, Setsuya Kurotaki, Motoi Ishibashi and Seiichi Saito, to an electronic beat.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Researchers of all kinds are now seeing the face as a potential blank slate, a computer-mutable landscape or testing ground for understanding the brain and communication.

We have redefined research and what the independent thinker/entrepreneur can explore, where engineers, programmers and artists put forward their own bodies as sites of exploration.

What do you think are the next steps for the science of the face as well as facial tracking and recognition software?