Marrianna and I did most of our weekly errands today. We try to organize any need to go into town into one day to save gas and to provide more freedom to do actitivities on other days. This afternoon, as we completed all our errands, we decided to have a late lunch-early dinner and eat at a local restaurant, skipping our evening meal.
We chose a nice restaurant, convenient to the shopping center we had just visited. We were seated quickly since it was in-between serving times. Our table was next to an outside wall, with a window through which we could see other diners in the outside serving area. Just outside the window were two college age persons, a girl and a guy.
Inveterate people watcher that I am, I watched them all the time they were there, which was long enough that Marrianna and I were about half way through our meal before they left. I couldn't hear a word that they said, and I'm not able to read lips, so I don't have any idea about their conversation. The girl had her back to us, so the only part of her face I could see was a profile. The guy faced us, and his face was very expressive.
After they left, I asked Marrianna whether there had been any studies she knew about facial expressions and meaning. As a part of the question, I wondered whether facial expressions are culturally independent, or do expressions mean the same across cultures. Does tightening of muscles around the eye, for example, mean the same in Japan as in Great Britain?
This evening, I did a Google search on "facial expression communication." The returns answered some of my question, and I can extrapolate to get the rest. Yes, there have been studies and, extrapolating, facial expressions are to some extent the same across cultures. For my casual inquiry, this was the site that provided the most information, with links that expand it to provide a great deal of information. A quick, clean answer is in this paper. There is also a site that discusses facial expressions for Kismet, a computerized robot.
I'm not conversant enough from one evening's reading to write with any depth on the subject. I'm not at all sure that I am drawing a correct conclusion from this bit of reading, but there is one aspect I want to touch - the universality of certain facial expressions, anger for instance. Now I wonder how that came about. How did the human body become adapted to similarly display anger regardless of culture?
Marrianna tells me that facial recognition skills are weak in children with Asperger Syndrome or are autistic. They don't recognize facial communication meanings, and, in some cases have to be taught. I'm not sure what that implies, but it is an interesting piece of information.
A non-sensible side thought: If aliens looking very similar to, say Star Trek's Vulcans, were to land tomorrow and non-violently make contact, suppose their facial expressions had evolved differently and anger was expressed with a smile, pleasure with red face and tight muscular tone, what would be our most likely response to their signs of pleasure?
I really enjoyed watching those two young persons this afternoon. I could not see anything below the upper level of their shoulders. One time he leaned close to her with an intense look. I interpreted the tightening of muscles around his eyes as intently, closely, seriously listening and watching her face. When he spoke, the intensity remained. There was an almost intimate feeling, felt even from the other side of the window. It didn't last long, probably less than thirty seconds, but that little tightening of the eyes was what prompted my wonder about facial expression reading.
And now I know a little more about facial expressions. I know that for various reasons they have been studied, and that other people have asked similar questions to my own. People watching is not only a pleasure, it is sometimes educational.
> If Star Trek's Vulcans ... facial expressions
> had evolved differently and anger was expressed
> with a smile...
Which prompts me to the possibly irrelevant, and at best sideways, observation...
Our species-universal smile seems, from the evidence, to have evolved from a threat signal (the baring of teeth) in other mammals, via an intermediate phas a s a placatory "don't hit me" signal. So it seems quite likely that a humanoid alien species might not have made the same transition?
Posted by: Felix Grant | April 24, 2008 at 08:38 AM