[decimon]

Smile when you say ping.

[A_perfect_lady]

and those emotions are not automatically expressed on the faces of those around us

THANK YOU! My face is naturally expressionless unless I'm cracking up. If I am happy, delighted, surprised, sad, furious, frightened, or shocked, my face registers nothing. My own family calls me "Old Stoneface." I have been misunderstood a LOT in my life.

On the bright side, I'm 46 and have no wrinkles.

[Leep]

I bet Chuck was a laugh a minute..:)

[MEGoody]

Darwin thought that emotional expressions – smiles, frowns, and so on –were akin to the vestigial tailbone – and occurred even though they are of no use.

Oh, that Darwin, he's a laugh a minute.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

[colorado tanker]

[PieterCasparzen]

Dogs and cats are frequently very good at detecting nefarious people.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Cicero]

I don’t think you can read everybody all the time. But usually people who are sensitive to such things can get a pretty good idea of what kind of person someone is by watching their face, or even a photo of it.

But training security workers to recognize terrorists is unlikely to work, for two reasons.

First, because they are not allowed to profile. Actually going after the folks most likely to be terrorists is deeply and fundamentally politically incorrect. In the current culture, it ain’t gonna happen.

Second, because academic training is unlikely to make anyone better at detecting troublemakers and criminals. It’s largely instinct—detecting small signs that you can’t necessarily put a name to.

Take a bunch of public union workers and train them, using a bunch of guys with psychology degrees to do the training? With Janet Incompetano’s political buddies in charge of the operation? I don’t think so.

[BitWielder1]

<frown> I'm sensing a prelude here to disallow facial expression profiling.

[count-your-change]

Facial expressions may be misread. For instance when someone with bulging eyes and foaming at the mouth as they clench their teeth approaches, they may just be insane instead of asking for directions in a friendly way.

[Prospero]

Emotions are basic, the expression of them is language, and as words did not invent sound expression did not invent emotion.

Long study has it what constitutes communication between persons is approximately only 7 percent "the words you use," with the remaining 93 percent divided between gesture, or body language as some prefer, with a plurality given to tone of voice.

Many a misunderstanding has happened where the cultural construct we know as language overlaps another, like an inner-city descendant of African slavery who saddles up to the cashier at a Korean-owned convenience store.

To the former eye-contact is an offense to one's elders while to the former lack of eye contact, or the appearance of avoiding eye-contact, is prelude to physical attack.

People die over such misunderstandings.

Yet another reason multiculturalism as state policy is suicidal.

[Talisker]

If you want to improve your accuracy in reading emotion in another person, you have to also take the context into account."

Context? We don't need no stinking context!