Well, one of the most direct effects of this universality finding was, it
really opened up research on emotion in the face, and emotion more generally.
Because for much of the 20th century, people had not studied emotion because it
was considered something inherently subjective.
>> Right.
>> That you could not measure. And is, and if you think about what's been going on
in psychology during this time, behaviorism, everything has to be observable.
How could you study something as private as an, as an emotion? This finding on
the face, suddenly suggested, which earlier research and psychology had not
suggested, that there was reliable information about emotion in an observable
immortality/g, in the face. So, it became clear that we could study emotions
from the outside not just.
>> Right.
>> From the inside. And in order to kind of, potentatiate this work, make it more
likely, Eckman and Freezen developed a measurement tool to enable the objective
studying of facial feature from the outside. They developed. The Facial Action
Coding System, the acronym for that is FACS, or FACS. Which is an elaborate,
detailed observational system. Observational meaning it relies on human
observation, to code all observable facial movement. Without saying, what it
is, so it's purely descriptive. And that really opened up an enormous amount of
opportunity in emotion research to set emotional behavior objectively to do it
without drawing people's attention to it. You know, because you could video
record and then code the behavior later.
>> Each emotional expression has a unique pattern of facial.
>> Right, but it's important to understand that facts is not just for emotion.
Facts is for describing facial movement. You can see which actions occur
together to describe any expression on the face. So, I'm going to give another
little demonstration right now. Let me back up. FACS, describes all facial
muscle actions in terms of arbitrary action units. So it separates all facial
behavior in terms of what each muscle does. So if I lift the inner corner of
the eyebrow. That's one action. Each action has an arbitrary numeric code. So
this is action unit one. This is two. This is four. This is five. This is six.
I could go through the whole face. There are 44 different action units to
describe. The individual components of facial action, and then you can, see
whatever the face does and describe it in terms of these components. So, if I
take one of the, emotion expressions that I modeled earlier, like anger. This
has the brow lower, which is actually unit four. Lifting the upper eyelid is
action unit five, tightening the lower eyelid is seven, pressing the lips
together and pushing the chin up is 17 and 24 so we have a 4, 5, 7,17 and 24,
so you can describe any facial action.
>> Right.
>> And one of the interesting applications of the facial action code in system has
been in computer animation. In fact its become the gold standard in on the
visual effects industry for developing virtual beings, virtual actors you know
it was used in Avatar, it was used in, in Harry Porter was used in, in any
animated creature they use the action units.
>> Yeah.
>> As the basis for animating our faces.
>> So, in fact, yeah, that leads to my next question, which is can you tell us
something about how you've applied FACS or Facial Action Coding Systems in your
own work?
>> It's been really interesting because my original intent was to study emotion,
and that's why I got into studying the face. So, I've applied FACS to my own
research on emotion where I've looked at things like the role of anger and
heart disease but that was my dissertation research. I've also looked at the
relationship between facial expression and people's reports of emotional
experience. And how emotions change as a function of more recently meditation
training. So that's in my research but as a result of becoming expert in facts.
I've learned that a lot of people are interested in this measurement tool for
other reasons. So I've trained animators. Like people who do visual effects
animation. I worked on the television show "Lie to Me" which was on from 2009
to 2011 on FOX. And this was a drama based on, Really, Paul Eckman's career. So
that the lead character in that, was a deception detection expert. And the
field of deception detection depends a lot on facial movement detection. So I
was a scientifical consultant on that show, reading scripts, coaching the
actors, etcetera. So it's really run the gamut it from basic research to
something really applied, like in the entertainment industry. And, sort of a, a
continuous thing throughout all of those is, is facts, the facial measurement
and, and the kinds of people I've trained in that, in that.
>> Right.
>> Yeah.
>> Great.
>> Well thank you, I hope you've enjoyed this, and also see how psychology can
applied in a lot of different areas and ways that you may not have expected.