- If I asked you to show me a picture of your mother,
you wouldn't show me a, uh, closeup shot of her elbow.
But you could, and you'd be right.
That would be a photo of her,
but it wouldn't feel right because it's not her face.
That's how important faces are to us.
We're going to see if forcing a facial expression
can change the way we feel.
- Are you comfortable handling dog feces?
Okay.
- And if you remove the ability
to make facial expressions,
will it affect how you perceive emotions in others?
- What? - No.
- How could that--that--no.
- I don't think so.
- And what are we saying by raising an eyebrow?
Do you know?
[electronic music]
♪ ♪
Why does doing this make me look angry?
And why does doing this make me look so happy?
Where does all this stuff come from?
When it comes to interpersonal communication,
it's easy to think that speech dominates,
but yet, we have hairless faces.
That's very unique among mammals
that are easy to see expressions on.
Facial expressions are shared across humanity.
A smile is a smile in any language.
Our faces seem uniquely adapted for communication.
Before we developed language, facial expressions
may have been just as vital in communication
as shouts and grunts.
And we, of course, still use them today.
But when it comes to facial expressions,
it's not just about seeing other people's expressions
and having them see yours.
It's also about seeing your own.
And the fact that our eyes are deep-set
allows us to see our own facial expressions
as we're making them.
If you smile, you can see
your own cheeks rise slightly.
And if you furrow your brow,
it encroaches on the top of your vision.
These things give you instant feedback
on the degree to which you are altering your face
and tell you instantly what sort of expression
you are putting out into the world.
No mirror required.
♪ ♪
Some of the most interesting experiments
on facial expressions have asked, "What comes first?
The emotion or the facial expression?"
Studies have found that if you hold a pencil
between your teeth all day, you will have a better day.
Why? Well, because holding a pencil
between your teeth without your lips touching
is like smiling.
It uses pretty much the same muscles.
Watch.
[muffled] I don't know--
I don't know I'm smiling, but I am.
Conversely, pursing your lips around the pencil
is like frowning.
And studies have found that if someone does that,
they will actually report having a less good day.
Well, we're gonna put that to the test
and find out if the facial contortions you make
can subconsciously affect how you feel.
Studies on how physiology affects mood
go as far back as the 1800s,
with early research carried out by Charles Darwin
and French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne.
This work has continued into present day
using various techniques to create smiles and frowns.
But studies have been inconsistent
as to whether facial expressions
can influence emotions, so we wanted to see
if we could demonstrate a correlation between the two.
♪ ♪
Hi. - Hi.
- Come on in, guys. Chris, my name is Michael.
Nice to meet you. My name is Michael.
We've recruited 20 volunteers
who think they're taking part in an allergy study.
Today we are testing a new kind of dog food,
and it actually seems to help dogs produce fewer allergens,
so people who are allergic to dogs
might be more comfortable around them.
And we're going to be using these allergen sticks.
Now, the purpose of this stick is to collect saliva
to check the way your body reacts
to possible allergens in the air.
Put it between your teeth like that, okay?
- Mm-hmm. - Okay.
- Half of our participants will be unknowingly forced
into a smile.
Yeah, very simple. - Uh-huh.
- The other half will unwittingly be forced
to use their frown muscles.
Watch. My teeth are together,
and then--hmm.
Got it? both: Mm-hmm.
- We're gonna give the frowners
and the smilers the same two tasks.
Go ahead, and I'll see you guys soon.
Will the people who were forced to frown
rank each task lower than those made to smile?
- Come on in.
- To test their levels of happiness,
our actor, Trin, gave our subjects a task
everybody loves: puppy herding
with lots and lots of puppies.
First up are our smilers.
- They're all wearing little tags.
- Mm-hmm. - So your job is to line them up
in alphabetical order. Once you got 'em all lined up,
I'll snap a photo of you. - Okay.
- And you got three minutes to do it.
Starting now. - Hello. I know.
- Make sure they're in alphabetical order.
- They're naming the dogs.
- She's having fun.
- I just got the--oh! Don't go away.
- [laughs]
- Swap those two.
- You got one minute left.
- This looks like fun,
but are they having even more fun
because they're being forced to smile?
- All right, get ready for the photo.
[camera shutter clicks]
- Our smilers are laughing
and goofing around.
- Now, let's see how our frowners react
to this fun task.
- Three minutes. - [humming]
- He's running away from you. - [groans]
- The question is, will frowning emphasize
the parts that aren't fun-- in your mind, at least.
[dogs barking]
- Oh, we lost F.
Got one little strangler right over here.
- Ugh!
a bit frustrated herding puppies...
- [mutters angrily]
their next task?
- If you would each grab a pair of gloves.
Are you comfortable handling dog feces?
Okay. And we're also going to be
looking at whether there are any protein deposits
that have collected, um, in the fecal matter.
- She's like, "Are you serious?"
- So go ahead and spread it out on the table.
- [stifled retching]
Not happy.
- And what you're looking for are small, hard deposits.
- Not much indication that there's a smile
trying to come through.
- Hmm. - Okay, great.
- [exhales] - Thank you, that'll do it.
- Our frowners don't seem
to be enjoying this assignment.
Will the smilers have a different reaction?
- Grab a pair of gloves.
It may be easier to kind of smear it and spread it out.
- The hypothesis is, that by smiling,
they'll focus more on the funny aspects
of what they're about to do.
- [laughs] Yeah. - Oh, my God.
- [laughs]
[groans] Oh.
- There's disgust in his eyes and his brow,
but his mouth can't help but smile.
- [chuckles] - Okay, great, guys.
Thank you so much. Then, when you're ready,
just follow me and we'll do a debrief with Mr. Stevens.
- Okay. - Sure.
- Hey, welcome back.
Now, think about, um,
organizing the puppies and taking a photo of them.
- Mmm. - And how you felt.
Tell me what you were thinking
and feeling while you were doing that task.
- I mean, the puppies are extremely cute.
- Mm-hmm. - Can I keep one?
Is it cool with you guys?
- The dogs actually cooperated pretty well.
- Mm-hmm? - I was able
to put them in order.
- They're amazing.
- It wasn't stressful.
- So on a scale of 1 to 10--
where 1 is you cannot tolerate it
and 10, best day of your life--
how would you rank the puppy photo task?
- I'm gonna say like a 9.
- 10. - 8.
- 8. - I'm gonna go with an 8.
- A 9.
- That's an average of 8.5
from our small sample of ten subjects
who were forced to smile during the photo assignment.
Now let's see how the frowners rated the same task.
How did you feel while you were doing that?
- Um, a little frustrated, to be honest with you,
'cause they kept moving around.
- Well, it was difficult getting them to stay in place
and put them in order.
- How would you rank the photo taking task?
- Mmm, 4. - About 4.
- A 10. I love puppies.
- Still a 10? - Yeah, me too.
- I would go more on the middle ground,
maybe like 5.
- Many of the frowners reported
feeling frustrated with this experience,
tallying an average score of 7.4,
more than a point lower than the smilers.
Now let's talk about the poop checking job.
- Very unpleasant. - It was disgusting.
- How would you rank the poop checking task?
- 1--it was a 1. - A 1?
- It was for sure a 1. - 1.
- A 4. - Is a zero possible?
- Our frowning subjects
averaged a low score of 1.9.
The question is,
did our smiling group feel
any better about digging
through poo?
- It wasn't too uncomfortable.
- It was sort of unexpected, but it wasn't like it bothered me.
- I wasn't, like, disgusted like, "Ew! This is disgusting!"
I just kind of held my breath.
- Many of our smilers reported this unpleasant task
as being no big deal or actually funny.
- I'd say a 5 because it wasn't--
neither here nor there for me.
- It was a 5. - A high 4.
- 5, I guess. - A 5? Okay.
- 5, right in the middle.
- The average score
for the smiling group
was 4.3 out of 10.
Smilers enjoyed sifting through poop
an average of 2 1/2 points more than our frowners.
And have a great day. - Have fun with your poop.
- [laughs] I will.
I always do.
♪ ♪
Our test found that people who made smile faces
enjoyed tasks more, and those who frowned
enjoyed them less.
This facial feedback concept
is still being debated though.
And other studies have recently failed
to reproduce these findings.
But it's a very healthy thing that we don't just look
at one test and say, "Well, that's it.
That must be the truth. We're done."
In the words of Brian Nosek, lead researcher
of the Reproducibility Project,
science isn't about truth and falsity.
It's about reducing uncertainty.
Facial expressions are so important
to human communication that people develop ways
to read your face even if they can't see it.
Tommy, thanks for coming to visit.
- Thanks for having me.
I love what you've done with the place.
- Hey, thank you so much. - [laughs]
- What I would like to talk about
is facial expressions.
- All right, sir. - 'Cause, Tommy,
you have been blind since you were born.
- That's right.
- How did you learn about facial expressions?
'Cause you make them. You smile.
You--I've never seen you mad, but I bet if you get mad...
- Yeah. - You--I can tell.
- Yeah. When I'm laughing, I smile, right?
It just comes naturally. - So that part's innate.
- That part is innate. Absolutely it is, no question.
But in order to imitate it, that was the tricky part for me.
Right? 'Cause sometimes I'd smile, like, too much.
You know, like that. I don't know.
Like, I feel like that's pushing it too hard.
That's not really natural. But, you know, so it's probably
somewhere around here, I guess.
- So could you make an angry face for me right now?
That's close, but do you think
if you'd seen an angry face it would be easier to fake one?
- Yes, I think so. - Let me ask you this.
Can you tell what facial expression I'm making?
- Well, when you're smiling, I can hear it in your voice.
- Right. - Right? It's very obvious.
'Cause when you smile, your lips don't really touch
the right way, so letters like M and B and P, for example,
you know, they sound just a little bit different.
- Right. So it sounds like you know more
about how a smile affects speech than most sighted people would.
- Thank you. There's a lot of audible clues
that help me to get the facial expression.
- Well, Tommy, thank you so much for coming in.
I love having guests in my home.
- Thank you, sir. - Thank you.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
When we look at other people's faces,
we often subconsciously imitate their facial expressions.
It's called facial mirroring.
And it's a way for us to let other people know
we understand them, that we feel the same things that they feel.
Facial mirroring begins in infancy
and continuous throughout our lives.
Studies have shown that if you can't facially mirror,
if you can't express things with your own face,
you actually have trouble understanding
what other people's faces are expressing.
So to try that out,
let's hinder some people's facial muscles.
What's a good way to do that?
Well, how about a dose of botulinum toxin?
♪ ♪
We have gathered a group of volunteers
for a facial expression recognition experiment.
Thank you all for coming in today.
We're going to begin with a test.
A test of your ability to recognize
facial expressions.
Our participants will be shown pictures of eyes
expressing either positive or negative emotions.
Your task is to look at each face and to decide
which of those four emotions the face is expressing.
Makes sense?
Each photo is designed to display
one standard emotion that is known to elicit
an established consensus.
For example, in this photo,
what emotion would you identify?
If you said, "terrified,"
you'd be in the majority.
Now it's our participant's turn.
Okay, everyone ready? - Mm-hmm.
- Go.
[device beeping]
All right, moving on to number 2.
For most people, this is a simple task
that should come with a relatively high success rate.
All right, card number 6... Number 9...
Number 13... 19...
Our 12 volunteers will give us an idea
of how well the average person identifies emotions.
And 25.
All right, everyone. Great work.
I hope you had fun. Thank you for your time.
After 25 cards, our participants were able
to identify the correct positive emotion
77% of the time, and the correct negative emotion
78.8% of the time.
But how well will they do if we stop them
from mirroring the expressions they see...
[cap pops]
By freezing their faces with botox?
We forced all of these participants
to receive Botox injections.
- How are you? - I'm good.
I'm Dr. Ali. Nice to meet you.
- Just kidding. They were gonna do it anyway,
and they let us tag along in the name of science.
- What areas were you looking to get done?
- Um, I'd like to do this area. - Okay, okay.
- I would like to fix this part between my two eyebrows,
because I feel like-- I don't know.
I just look older and grumpy.
- Although we communicate a ton of information
with our faces, in the interest of looking younger,
many people pay to be injected with a chemical
that essentially renders our faces mute,
or rather, gives us a sort of facial speech impediment.
Botox was first used in the 1970s
to treat muscular eye disorders like crossed eyes
and uncontrollable blinking.
The FDA didn't approve the use of Botox
for cosmetic procedures until 2002.
The active ingredient in Botox is a toxin
produced by the bacterium
This toxin can cause botulism in larger amounts,
but in smaller amounts when injected into, say,
the wrinkles between your eyebrows or around your mouth,
the toxin blocks the nerves from delivering signals
to the facial muscles, telling them to contract.
[bell tings]
- Pull your hair back a little bit...
- Yes. - And then tell me what areas
you were thinking of getting it done.
- So I was thinking here,
'cause I have a couple wrinkles
that are starting to show. - Okay.
- I'm 31 years old,
and I want to get Botox because I want to look young forever.
- Common expressions that people want to get rid of
is the angry lines, the furrows we get in between the eyes.
And the horizontal wrinkles we get in our forehead,
that will go away. - If the Botox procedure
prevents these patients from being able to mirror
the facial expressions of others,
will it also impede their ability to recognize
the emotions associated with those expressions?
- Have you had Botox before? - I never have.
- Do you wanna touch everything? - If we can, yeah.
- Yeah, definitely. - Awesome.
I think Botox is probably going to change my expressions
and I might have to overdo them a little bit,
but I already do that anyway,
so I think that it won't matter so much.
- You doing okay? - Mm-hmm.
- We'll soon explore whether paralyzing
their facial muscles affects how these patients score
on the facial recognition test.
- You may not see the results for at least
three to seven days. - Oh, yeah. Okay.
- We'll check back in with our subjects in two weeks
after they've settled into their new,
expression-free faces.
In the meantime, let's meet two people
who've had modified faces for quite a while.
Lacy, Justin, welcome. - Hi.
- Hi. How are you? - Hi.
- Great to see you guys. - Hi.
It's nice to meet you. - Thanks for coming over.
- How are you? - Good to see you.
So, I'm so thrilled to have both of you here.
How does it feel to be known
as the Ken and Barbie of real life?
- I don't know--the world just pinned me as that,
and then I happened to meet my best bestie
that is Ken. - And what about you?
Did you intend to be like a Ken doll or...?
- No. I mean, initially-- initially this all had to do
with the passion that I had for, like, body sculpture, right?
I just did what I loved, and I saw this as a medium
to be--to be creative, to be open,
to be expressive, and to be different,
right, to set myself apart.
So I'm the first person in the world to have
three-piece shoulder implants.
We are the first people to try that, right?
We're own guinea pigs. We're our own--
- We create them. - We're our own
Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein, right?
- Okay, so have both of you had Botox done?
- Absolutely. - Every--every three months
since I've been 25 years old.
- How has Botox or other procedures on your face
affected your ability to make facial expressions?
- I waited a year to have it this year so I could actually
see a little bit of my own face, because my kids are like,
"Mom, you know, we can't really tell if you're mad at us.
You always look like you're surprised."
I'm, like, walking around the house like this.
I'm like, "Ohh!"
So I haven't had Botox in a year
just because I wanted to be able to do this.
"Go to your room!" No. - Interesting.
Do you feel like you've lost something
by not being able to show when you're mad?
- I don't know what you're talking about.
- Well, when you look at me now, you can tell I'm smiling.
I just don't have the lines here.
It's a bit of a subtle change.
- Have you noticed Botox affecting your ability
to read other people's facial expressions?
- What? - No.
- How could that--that--no.
- My answer would be no. - No. It's actually--
- You haven't noticed that? - Not at all.
[laughter]
- Barbie and Ken may not ascribe
to the facial mirroring theory,
but let's check back with our Botox recipients.
It's been two weeks, and now they've brought
their wrinkle-free faces back
to see if their limited expressions
will affect their ability to read emotions.
So, to refresh you on the rules: look at the eyes,
determine what emotion is being conveyed,
write down your answer,
and then we'll move on to the next one.
Go.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- My face feels a lot more relaxed.
And it's--it's kind of nice.
- Okay, slide number 9. [device beeps]
- When I look at people,
they don't really know that I'm angry.
- I actually can't.
- I did have a friend-- um, she noticed.
She gets Botox too, and she was like,
"Your Botox looks amazing."
- If I'm angry, probably how you would know
is by my eye contact with you.
- Because I can't move my forehead.
- This subject has definitely limited her ability
to make a facial expression,
as have our other Botox recipients.
But will that affect how they interpret emotions in others?
All right, just 75 more. [women scoff]
Kidding. That's the end of the exam.
In our pre-Botox study, our participents identified
77% of the positive emotions
and 78.8% of the negative emotions correctly.
But after Botox, our participents
correctly identified only 73.8% of the positive emotions
and 68.8% of the negative emotions.
So, at least in our modest sample,
once our participents lost their ability to frown
they found it especially difficult
to identify negative emotions in others.
But if modern advances like Botox can impede
our capacity to read other's faces,
can other forms of technology enhance our ability
to see emotions?
Author and theoretical neurobiologist Mark Changizi
has developed a scientific way to read facial expressions.
Mark, I'm glad you came over, because you have knowledge
about facial expressions and what's going on
beyond just the more obvious external stuff.
Is blood flow part of facial expressions?
- Yeah, so we don't usually think about it,
but at all times you're seeing
these subtle modulations of color.
And as you get more blood or less blood under the skin,
it becomes bluer or yellower, and as it becomes more
or less oxygenated,
it becomes redder or greener.
And this is true independent
of what ethnicity you are, what race you are,
or what kind of primate you are. It's the same.
- What emotions correlate to what colors?
- Well, there's a rough sense in which when you're angry,
you're showing oxygenated blood.
When you're sad, it's more likely
to be showing greener.
If you're fearful, your blood pumps away
from the periphery, which means
that it gets yellower.
- So, Mark, you've brought some tools with you,
an invention of yours, actually, that helps us
better perceive these color changes.
- That's right, so these are what paramedics wear
'cause they're nice, protective eyewear
that they should be wearing anyway,
and when you wear these, your veins,
suddenly they're glowing a little bit.
The same technology that helps paramedics see veins
also allows you to see emotions better
because it's enhancing that same oxygenation signal
that those emotions rely upon.
- So you've got glasses that allow us
to better see the colors that are related to emotion
and how it's affected by blood flow.
- That's right. This is not the kind of thing--
it's not like you look and it says, "angry,"
you know, written across the screen.
No, it works on your normal intuitions.
The idea is that it makes those signals easier to see,
so it should give you more insight
into what their mood, what their intent is.
- Whether through technology or evolution,
we humans have always found a way to read
and use facial expressions.
And those expressions show no sign
of becoming less important,
unless we evolve past having faces, of course.
So, did you like the show?
If you didn't, put a pencil in your mouth
and go watch it again.
If you enjoy it more or less or the same,
just let us know.
Science will thank you.
And as always, thanks for watching.
[electronic music]
♪ ♪