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Vladimir_M comments on How do autistic people learn how to read people's emotions? - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: eugman 20 October 2010 01:57PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 21 October 2010 07:38:20AM *  2 points [-]

That's an interesting test! I scored 28, and for most of the questions I failed, I find that the correct answers make much more sense than my initial guesses when I look back at the pictures. I find #29 the most cryptic.

Comment author: eugman 21 October 2010 11:58:18AM *  3 points [-]

Look at the direction of the gaze and the lack of eye contact. When someone is facing you but looking away, they are either thinking of something else or being avoidant. If they are being avoidant and looking down, then they are generally being submissive, possibly because they are lying.

Score of 30 btw. I had the same experience where I was able to recontextualize the pictures. It would make a great application if it had like 100 pictures.

Edit: Just a thought, would it be useful to people to have an article or something describing specific things to look for, like I have above? Sort of like an emotional taxonomy? It seems like it'd be an interesting project.

Comment author: erratio 21 October 2010 08:29:21PM 1 point [-]

I think I used a combination of gaze/eye contact and eye shape, eg someone with very wide open eyes is probably scared or surprised, someone with narrowed eyes is concentrating/suspicious, etc.

Incidentally, my own score was 29 and none of my errors were completely implausible. This also goes a long way to explaining for me why it bothers me so much when people wear sunglasses.

would it be useful to people to have an article or something describing specific things to look for, like I have above

I think it would be great, but might be hard to include sufficient detail to be useful to people who have difficulties. Preoccupied and guilty both involve lack of eye contact but how do you describe the other differences?

Comment author: eugman 22 October 2010 02:23:03AM *  1 point [-]

Well for those two, I think there are two possible differences. Guilty people are going to be looking down more and possibly have there eyes closed a bit more.

Possible attributes off the top of my head:

  • eye contact

  • general eye direction

  • direction of the face

  • open/closed

  • eyebrows

  • head tilt (look at number 21for a great example)

  • wrinkled/furrowed face

Are there any more? That's definitely enough to categorize most emotions.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 22 October 2010 11:13:56AM 2 points [-]

A few important ones

  • pupil dilation
  • narrowing of eyelids
  • wrinkles in the bridge of the nose
  • wrinkles in muscles around the eyes
  • symmetry of movement

When you think about it, it's quite telling about just how expressive our eyes are when this test expects people coming out substantially below average to still pick correctly twice as frequently as if they were just guessing.