Can you spot a fake smile?
January 20th, 2008 by Erich ViethHere’s a well-conceived website. Straight-forward and fun.
You will be given 20 short video clips of people smiling. Are they genuine smiles or fake smiles? After you make your picks (this will take about 5 minutes), this BBC site will reveal the correct answers and give you some genuine pointers for determining whether smiles are genuine or fake.
I got 13 out of 20 correct, though I had little confidence that I was doing any better than I would had I merely flipped a coin.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:49 am
Cool! I got 18 out of 20. The trick, so I’ve been told, is to watch the eyes. Fake smiles are mouth only, real smiles include a scrunching up of the outside corners of the eyes. Apparently it works, since it was almost the only thing I looked at. It can be a bit hard to tell on a few people–some have creases in that area and it’s hard to tell if they deepen or not, and one guy looks like he’s learned to fake with his eyes, too. (Which by the way isn’t that hard, just concentrate on tightening up your eyes when you smile–funny thing, though, it turns a fake smile into a real smile for me when I do it.)