Most of the time, people return a smile when others smiles or try to console someone if his face looks gloomy. But a new study revealed that right emotions cannot determine the right facial expressions.
Alex Martinez, electrical and computer engineering professor at The Ohio State University said it was not easy to detect emotions from facial expressions. Martinez and his team focused mainly on building computer algorithms for analysing facial expressions. Their findings were presented at the annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science last week.
They analyzed the kinetics of movement of muscles in the face and compared them with a person’s emotions. They detected that emotions based on a person’s facial expressions were most of the time wrong.
Martinez said that all persons who smile are not happy. He also said that everyone who smiles is not happy. He also rubbished the claims that facial expressions can detect if a customer is satisfied or not or if a child is attentive or if someone is guilty or not. He claimed that these could never be detected from the face.
However, the study said that colour of the face could detect emotions. They said that when one experiences emotion, the brain releases peptides (hormones) that change the blood flow and blood composition. As such the face is inundated with the peptides and the colour changes, the study said.
The team had researchers from California Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin and Northeastern University.
