30 January 2010

Chinese interview with Mr. Wong Yuk Man (黃毓民) in Calgary

A friend gave me the idea of doing videos of Chinese people. First of all because i can't understand one word of it and it would be grate to see some emotions on a face that isn't that familiar. It's important to remember that oriental culture is very different from the western one. For example when showed a disgusting video an oriental will not show his emotions in public because it's not customary. Still it will be interesting to see what we can get from a small video.

The video in question is this one:


1) 00:00:04 / defensive stance - he isn't confident about the interview or he is just not comfortable being asked all the question /
Photobucket

2) 00:00:44 - 2 seconds / he gained confidence by being more open to the person who interviews him /
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3) 00:00:52 - 5 seconds / he started to gesture about what he was saying /
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4) 00:01:03 -2 seconds / a very particular nose pick after settings his glasses. touching your nose is a gesture intended to calm yourself but i never saw it done this way /
Photobucket

4) 00:01:20 / disgust or slight anger showed in the lower part of the face - this face actually means that he is says OK or agrees with someone but he is not satisfied by the situation /
Photobucket

I will do the rest of the video later. I'm running out of videos so i must use my limited resources as much as i can. It's not that i don't have videos but only a few of them so a lot of emotions. And for now i just want to show the emotions on people faces. For example in this video i only seen only one... the rest where body movements.

24 January 2010

Heidi Said

I really like this girl. She is always sad or angry or surprised about the world. I consider her my benchmark to compare with other people. Maybe i'm just a sucker for girls with problems. Maybe she doesn't have problems but that's the impression that she gave me.

This is her video:


and this is what i saw:

1) time 00:00:04 / sadness in the brows and the lower face /
Photobucket

2) time 00:00:06 / contempt - usually contempt is registered by a asymmetrical smile /
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3) time 00:00:13 / disgust - raising of the chin /
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4) time 00:00:51 / i can't see all her face but it look to me that it's a sad face covered up by a smile /
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5) time 00:01:20 / a blend with disgust and contempt - disgust by raising of the chin and contempt from a asymmetrical smile /
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I found one more contempt at 00:01:27 which i won't cut out.

Chris Matthews Predicts Brown Win part 2

I'm finishing this video



It's very important when you start to detect emotions to have a baseline of how the person looks or stand normally. He may have a back problem and walk leaning forward. If in this case you see him talking with someone it's false to assume that he is interested in the person. As with the face the length or deepness of wrinkles on the face determine in some percentage what the emotions is. With age some faces tend to have more permanent wrinkles so you have to be careful with judging the expression.

It's very hard to find normal faces usually there smiling which makes most of the permanent wrinkles disappear.

Photobucket

and

Photobucket

1) time 00:03:03 / sadness in the lower eyelids , looking down and sadness mouth /
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2) time 00:04:49 / happiness in the eyes and in the mouth /
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3) time 00:05:28 / slight angry registered by the brown lowered and drawn togheter, vertical lines appearing between the brows and lower lip tense and raised
Photobucket
* The anger emotions has to register on the full face or it can mean something else. You have to take into consideration what he is saying that we see this kind of emotions.
Part of the transcript: "I don't make statements like i don't work in a emergency room if you have a conscience and are for abortions. I mean how do you make statements like that."
We can pretty safely assume that he is angry on the people who say such things.

4) time 00:06:57 / sadness the same as before with a little bit of fear in the forehead. There are horizontal lines only in the middle part.
Photobucket


There are a few more emotions until the end of the video. I should point to two important moments when he beats his lips twice. The first time at 00:07:13 and a second time at 00:07:22 meaning that he is probably anxious or nervous about the statements.

21 January 2010

Shoulder Shrug - body movement - tutorial

I have shown a lot of videos in which I have pointed out this subtle body movement but haven't taken the time to explain what dose it mean. The wikipedia article refers to "an exercise in weight training". For detecting lies this sign represent not knowing something.
This is the full body movement: Photobucket which is a pretty common sign. You probably seen it when you ask somebody a question and he doesn't know the answer

It's a general rule in detecting lies and emotions that if something isn't done right or doesn't seem natural it's probably wrong. Although in this example if you ask somebody a question and he doesn't raise his shoulders as up as he can it doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't truthful. It can just mean that for example while he is answering he kind of remembers the answer. Or he/she isn't exactly sure about the answer but choose to answer that he/she doesn't know because they're is in a hurry.

You always have to take in account what the subject of the inquiry is and the situation. This is a word of warning regarding all of the future tutorials. You shouldn't assume anything base upon one or two observation. You should take into consideration a lot of facts before you can say that somebody is lying. There isn't anything that can replace evidence in telling if somebody is truthful or not.


The shoulder shrugs that i have shown you are partial body movement. They usually occur when the person isn't sure about what he is saying.
Here are a few examples from the videos that i have analyzed:

Photobucket

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The feeling that i have when I'm doing this is that I'm not comfortable in my own skin. I'm usually well aware of this type of sign's when I'm making them yet most people aren't. I have done a few controlled experiments in which this particular body movement is pretty common. I can't show the videos because the people that i have worked with(usually friend and family) wouldn't be to happy about this. In my experiments i ask the person that i would be interviewing a few question which they can answer truthfully or not. After the interview was over i would go over the question with them and get the sentences that are lies and the one's that are truthful and then watch the videos for sign's of deceit. It's not always a intentional misleading. Sometimes i would ask a difficult question and the first answer wouldn't always be truthful.

Hope this short tutorial was helpful and see you soon when i finish the "Chris Matthews Predicts Brown Win" video.

20 January 2010

Chris Matthews Predicts Brown Win

This is the video i'm going to be working on.



It's a very long video... about 10 minutes so i won't be doing it all in this post. In my next post i'm going to star explaining what is the shoulder shrug so stay tuned.

1) time 00:00:42 - 4 seconds / first shoulder shrug /
Photobucket

2) time 00:00:53 - 4 seconds / second shoulder shrug - more obvious /
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3) time 00:01:07 - 3 seconds / defense maneuver /
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4) time 00:02:40 - 3 seconds / sadness,head shaking from side to side in dissaproval and letting go of upper lip
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Conversations with History: Paul Ekman

I'm to tired to write a new blog entry so i'll cheat a little bit.

Here is a video of Dr. Paul Ekman




and a treat... the first episod of Lie to me. It's the TV Series that this blog is dedicated to



Sorry about the subs. This is how i found it.

19 January 2010

Explanations and Documentation

       I had a few discussions with the people who can help me get this blog launched and all of them suggested that i should try explaining what i am talking about.

       I can't start to explain and build my tutorials because i need pictures and a lot of materials to illustrate. As all scientific data you shouldn't trust my word. I need facts and observable information. This isn't something new and there are a lot of studies done and i could easily copy someone else's work but that wouldn't help me in any way. I am here to learn as much or probably more than you. Work is the key to success and i need to work a lot to compete with those who are natural or who are doing this thing for a long time. There is a whole system to detect lies and deceit.
       It is generally refereed to as deceit because you can't actually tell if he/she is lying or not. There isn't a clear facial expression for lying. Usually there are contradictions or Freudian slips. For example in the obama post i made i wasn't trying to prove he was lying. It just struck me that for wining the nobel prize he wasn't exactly surprised or humbled or happy or any other expression you would expect. Although i didn't analyzed all of the video it is clear that he is angry or extremely concentrated. The reason for this are multiple and are completely irrelevant.
       Given the fact that i'm half a globe away i couldn't possible find out by future investigation what is the reason for the masked expression of anger. Maybe there weren't any hidden reason he just probably woken up on the wrong side of bed. This whole blog is just and exercise to help us understand and learn through repetition how to better understand human emotions. And if it's the case to help us detect in case of need what somebody is actually feeling.
       You have to remember one thing... and consider this an official warning. Knowing how to read human emotions is like a special power. Don't get me wrong we all know how to spot a surprise face

a happy face

but maybe sometime the people showing a fake smiling face just want's to tell you that he is handling his problems. It isn't always necessary to point out that a person is sad or disgusted. Maybe it's with himself or with something that he remembered while he was talking with you. In day to day communication with friend and relatives it is recommended you avoid or at best be subtle about it.

       Before i will start building the tutorial i will direct you to a few website's that you should read. I'm going to start with a link to wikipedia explaining who is Dr. Paul Ekman and what is his research about. You can find the link here. On the bottom of the page you will find the link to his website. On Dr. Paul's website you will see a lot of reference to a TV Series called Lie to me. Here is the official page. You can find all this link and many more just using google. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary just pointing you in a direction in case your interested.

       The initial study is about coding the facial movements FACS for short. He wrote a book about this. There is a lot of work just cataloging and coding all of the possible movements yet this is just the beginning to what is ahead. It wouldn't of been possible to continue research without this important step. The next one is determining emotions on the human face. You should take note that this is not the first time that this was researched.

       Charles Darwin and Duchenne de Boulogne both try experiments to determine the fundamental question: are emotions common to all humans? Just a quick reference to Charles Darwins book and to Duchenne work and life

       I will let you read the information i have given you and i will come back soon with a tutorial about shoulder shrug because i have a lot of material and examples regarding this.

18 January 2010

Eye Direction and Lying

I will start a series of short tutorial to explain what i'm talking about. I don't know how exactly to do this but i will try to do my best. As everything i will start with little things and go on to bigger things.

First of all a short explanation that has been on the Internet for a long time. You can find it here. I won't copy everything. You can read it at the link.

There are only one thing i consider important that i want you to remember. First of all a image is worth 1000 words.



Meaning:

C = constructed as in Visually Constructed / Auditory Constructed
R = remember as in Visually Remembered / Auditory Remembered
F and I = Feeling / Kinesthetic and Internal Dialog.

Let's put things into perspective.
Let's say your child ask's you for a cookie, and you ask them "well, what did your mother say?" As they reply "Mom said... yes." they look to the left. This would indicate a made up answer as their eyes are showing a "constructed image or sound. Looking to the right would indicated a "remembered" voice or image, and thus would be telling the truth.

Microsoft CEO Ballmer - detecting emotions part 2

This is the video i'm talking about.



I did two posts down a partial analysis. I will continue here. In case you didn't notice i kind of moved a little bit from the realm of emotions. The reasons is that there are such good sign's that i can't resist. But for those of you who aren't familiar with detecting lies i will do a series of tutorial to help you get started.

As for this video this is what i saw:

1) time 00:00:38 / false suprise /
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2) time 00:01:15 - 00:01:17 / shoulder shrug and contemp on his face/
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3) time 00:01:22 - 00:01:26 / I don't know exactly what happened here. The thing is he isn't that confident about what he is talking about. Is a pretty big issue if iphone will have success or not. This is a body movement. It's like he isn't comfortable in his skin and tries to get out
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4) time 00:01:41 - 00:01:43 / shoulder shrug /
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And that's it. You be the judge about what he is really felling.

17 January 2010

elana udrea is not exactly truthful

She is a politician from my country. Actually the minister of tourism. You can read more about her at this page. First thing is first:

1) normal face



2) just for posterity... try not to look at the cleavage... the face is more important :D



The video i wanted to show you is this one:



It's not one of most importance but is actually very funny. I will tell you all it's story after i do a little bit of analyze.

1) time 00:00:05 - 00:00:07 / false surprise, moving her face to one side /

Photobucket

2) time 00:00:09 - 00:00:11 / a lot of eye flicker /
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3) time 00:00:12 / disgust / Photobucket

4) time 00:00:16 / shoulder shrug /
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5) time 00:00:37 / false smile / Photobucket

For as much as i am concern she isn't truthful about not knowing anything about the telephone call. And in case you are wondering what it's all about. A few days before this interview on a well known TV program someone phoned and started praising her that she was doing a very good job. The TV host actually said "I have a very good musical ears, aren't you miss Elena Udrea?" The rest is history.

Microsoft CEO Ballmer - detecting emotions

This is the interview after the IPhone was launched:



1) time 00:00:00 / contemp /

2) time 00:00:04 / false smile /

3) time 00:00:12 - 00:00:14 / false surprise /

4) time 00:00:26 / fear /
* i never thought i would see such a emotion so quickly. It's my third video and to see one of the most rarest emotions caught on camera.

5) time 00:00:26 - 00:00:30 / shoulder shrug /
* i will explain in a later post was the shoulder shrug is all about

I will stop here with this video... i have a lot of thing to do. The next post will contain the rest of the analysis. And in the near future i will start posting a little general information for those of you who don't know anything about detecting human emotions.

16 January 2010

Is Obama 'suprised, humbled' by 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?

In this post I'm going to do something a little bit harder. I'm going to try to show the emotions of president Obama when he announced that he was surprised, humbled by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

This is the video:



First a little bit of documentation. I need to see how a neutral face look likes. Unfortunately there isn't any out there or i should look harder. Anyways i found this ones showing a happy face, a neutral and a angry one so we should have a pretty good understanding of how his face normally looks like.



Happy



Normal - slightly concentrated



Angry




Now for the video

1) time 00:00:22 / slight anger shown in full face /

2) time 00:00:23 / masked expresion of anger /


... it basically like this all the movie. He is showing slight anger. This can also be concentration on what he is doing but no surprise or happiness. The reason may be multiple and i won't talk about the truth about what he is saying. Sorry about the poor quality and so little images but this is only my second time and i have yet to master enough patience to cut up the video before and prepare everything. I'm doing this on the fly and i am late as it is.

first video - explanations and tests

So this is the video i am working on. I won't finish all of the emotions because it's a little bit to late in the night but i will do my best to finish it soon.



I'm running on Ubuntu on my home computer that means a lot of free software for me to work with. For analyzing the movies i use Avidemux(GTK). Just type avidemux in your synaptic package manager, install and you'll all set. You can use the key's 4 and 6 to scroll frame by frame along the video. I have a numpad on my laptop so that is a bonus :). Use the key P once to start the video playing and again to stop the video. I'm not expecting everybody that will show an interest in this to use the above program but for the short time i have been using it it's ok and i recommend it.

So first thing is first. The girl's name is Heidi. I don't know anything about why the film was made. I just saw a few feelings showing very clearly on here face and decided to use it. I don't have a method for getting videos. I'm still in the training stage so this for me is a work in progress. I will eventually make my way to more skilled liars: statesmen and actors. For now i will only show emotions and as time goes on i will go to analyze what see is saying in relation to what she/he is speaking.

1) time 00:00:07 / sadness in lower part of face /





2) time 00:00:13 / contemp or disgust in lower part of face /


3) time 00:01:27 / contemp /
*she was talking about living with no electricity so i can understand that


4) time 00:02:43 / contemp /






I can't do anymore. I'm certain that there are a few more emotions hiding there but i am to sleepy to do this properly. I did so a lot of shoulder srub which is a sign of insecurity. For what i can tell she really does believe what she says and of course i don't have any doubt in the first place. But we are here to learn so hope we will do this in the future.

Have a good night and see you soon.

15 January 2010

a fresh start

A fresh start... haha. I wanted to do a blog on my own but it turned out it's simpler to just use blogspot.

Just to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm 23 living in Romania, i am fascinated by everything new. The reason i made this blog it's to help people better understand human emotions. The science isn't anything new. It's common knowledge that the "truth is written on our faces" you just have to learn to read the faces. I'm a big fun of the TV Series "Lie to me" and of course of the person on who the series was based on Dr. Paul Ekman.

I have studied a lot about humans in general. My degree is in computer science but i study psychology in my spare time. Basically i read everything i get my hands on and i get a lot of help from the teachers and friends from the psychology university right here in town.

The detection of human faces and hopefully lie is a recent thing. I'm getting pretty good at this and i want to help the people that want to get to a certain degree in detecting this basic features.