IN YOUR FACE!
Your face manipulates other people, lies about your age, and mimics other faces so you can feel empathy. So what secrets are you revealing, and can you control them? Strike your best mirror pose, and read this...
According to a new theory about the function of the face, its primary purpose is to manipulate other people. Others maintain that our facial expressions reflect our innermost emotions. Now, detailed 3D scans, extensive DNA analyses, and observations of isolated peoples are finally about to solve the mysteries of the face. So, what secrets are we revealing, and can we better control them?
It is 1839. In his home in Kent, England, Charles Darwin cannot take his eyes of his newborn son. The young scientist is overwhelmed with paternal emotions – and also with scientific curiosity. He notes everything about the baby’s first grimaces.
“From his eighth day and for a while after that, I observed the first signs of a burst of screaming… As soon as the screaming began, all the muscles around the eyes contracted heavily, and the mouth opened wide,” Darwin says about his son in 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'.
The work attracted a lot of attention when it was published in 1872. It contained the first scientific theories about face development and the meaning of facial expressions.
Darwin had collected notes, photos, and other data from scientists throughout the world to show how dogs, cats, and chimpanzees have facial expressions reminiscent of those in humans. His aim was to place humans in an evolutionary context. In the work, he also identifies six facial expressions reflecting basic emotions that are recognisable in all cultures: anger, disgust, surprise, joy, sadness, and fear. Darwin was trying to find the answer to two important questions: why does the face look the way it does, and what do the different facial expressions mean? These apparently simple
questions are not easy to answer. Today's generation of scientists are working hard to uncover the secrets of the face, using algorithms, DNA technology, and 3D image processing. And they have found a series of surprising answers to Darwin’s basic questions.
Scientists search for 'facial DNA'
It is 2015. Anthropologist Mark Shriver from Penn State University in the US looks at two very special portraits in his office. One is of himself; the other is his six-year-old son as he may look at the age of 25. Both portraits were made by a computer, based on DNA tests.
The picture of himself bears some resemblance to the original. It's harder to assess the accuracy of the portrait of his son, but Shriver already knows that it will not be perfect, because as yet it is still only possible to identify a few, coarse features based on DNA – eye and hair colour, gender, ethnicity, and age. But these kinds of portraits are expected to become more accurate as scientists gain more knowledge about the face.
The method is, of course, already used in the investigation of criminal cases and missing persons – and for population monitoring. A 2015 Hong Kong campaign to promote cleaner streets saw authorities extracting DNA from chewing gum and cigarette butts left in city streets to generate portraits that were published on large posters in a public-shaming exercise – a modern version of pillory.
Mark Shriver and other scientists around the world are trying to identify all the genes that are responsible for the huge variation of the human face. The field is growing rapidly thanks to new technology. Scientists sequence ever more genes that are involved in producing facial bones, cartilage, soft tissue, and skin. So far, about 50 have been identified, and some of them are associated with multiple traits. However, scientists still do not know if they are searching for hundreds or thousands of genes – only that our faces are tremendously complex.
We have 43 facial muscles, and the number of possible facial expressions is prodigiously high. Some 10,000 have been registered in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), an index identifying facial expressions that are common throughout the world. The total pool of human facial expressions is, however, far more extensive because our faces are asymmetrical, and because we change markedly with age.
The face reflects the past
Modern humans, or at least humans looking about the same as we do now, appeared in Africa around 200,000 years ago. Our close relatives – gorillas, chimpanzees, and the earliest human species – had a flat forehead, a small brain, and a large, protruding jaw. But modern man has a round head with a large brain and a smaller jaw. We have a flat and naked face, in which eyes, nose, and mouth are located vertically above each other. It's a highly unusual arrangement compared with most other mammals.
Palaeontologists who research human origin and evolution are shedding new light on our odd faces by means of fossil skulls. The fossils tell a story of how the modern face formed through diet, climate, migration, and encounters with other groups of people. When we began to cook our food, jaw and molars shrank; chewing consumed less energy. Fights over food and mates might have contributed to our strong cheeks and forehead bones, able to protect against bone fractures.
The climate also played a role in shaping the face. Anthropologists from the Pennsylvania State University have studied 3D images of 467 noses, measuring their length, width, and height and comparing them to the climate of the regions in which the nose owners live. The scientists found that wide nostrils are related to high temperatures and air humidity, whereas narrow, high nostrils are mostly found in humans that live in a cold, dry climate. The explanation is that narrow nostrils make the air flow pass closer to and more slowly past the moist, warm nose mucosa, where it is adapted to the body's internal conditions before it is inhaled into the lungs. So, narrow nostrils are advantageous in cold regions – and vice versa in warm places.
Further, it seems likely that our ancestors’ lives and surroundings not only influenced the shape of the face, but also influenced the motions of faces – our expressions.
Facial expressions are reflexes
Facial expressions that served practical purposes in our ancestors remain today, even though they may no longer have the same functions. When we raise our eyebrows and open our mouths in surprise, it might be because when our ancestors spotted a predator, they raised their brows to expand their field of vision and opened their mouths to get sufficient oxygen to run.
The expression is so closely connected with the body’s reaction to the unexpected that we still do it today. The same mechanism is known from the animal kingdom. Dogs move several times around themselves before they lie down, which might be because their ancestors formed a "bed" in the grass in this way. Some scientists believe that most of our facial expressions are reflexes that go all the way back to the ancestors of mankind.
If that is true, then all people throughout the world might share the same expressions when subjected to similar situations. That was what Darwin claimed when he identified the six universal facial expressions that reflect our basic emotions. And in 1968, American psychologist Paul Ekman visited a remote people in New Guinea, to test whether Darwin was right.
The world smiles with you
It is 1968. Paul Ekman and his team are struggling through the wilderness in the rugged mountain region that is the home of the Fore tribe. The people live isolated and primitive lives and know nothing about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Lunar race, or Hollywood. Unspoiled by Western culture, the people live a life closely related with nature – perfect, then, for Ekman’s experiment.
The scientists bring photos of people with different facial expressions and ask the locals to choose, from a list, the description that goes with each expression. The conclusion is that Darwin was right. A smile is a smile and expresses joy throughout the world. And the same is true for Darwin’s five other basic expressions.
The result proved to be controversial, with several anthropologists of the time believing that facial expressions are acquired and culture-based. Still, Ekman’ s discoveries gained traction in the following years as he and other scientists carried out the experiment in 21 countries, with the same results. Several decades later, new studies also support Ekman. Analyses of 4,800 photos of athletes with and without eyesight, made by American psychologist David Matsumoto from the 2004 Olympics, indicate that a facial expression is instinctive. All athletes had the same expression of joy when they were on the podium, and athletes with silver medals smiled the 'social smile', which differs from a genuine smile by not causing laugh lines to appear.
According to Paul Ekman, our facial expression is so closely and instinctively linked with our emotions that it is possible to see when a person lies in a split second, based on small motions of the facial muscles. This part of Ekman’s work is often used by the US intelligence and security services of the CIA
It is possible to see when a person lies in a split second, based on small motions of the facial muscles.
and FBI. When you meet a suspicious customs officer at the airport who scrutinises your face, he or she might very well have been trained according to Paul Ekman’s methods.
But Ekman’s theory of a face being the mirror of emotions is now challenged by several scientists, who criticise the basic methodology of Ekman’s original experiment.
Fear becomes a threat
It is 2014. Fifty-four members of the Namibian Himba people, from two isolated villages, participate in an experiment. In the US, 68 Americans participate. American psychologists Maria Gendron and Lisa Feldman Barrett are responsible for the experiment, which is designed to test the method that Paul Ekman used in Papua New Guinea. Both experimental groups are divided in two, and all are introduced to photos of people with the six facial expressions that Darwin and Ekman worked with. One half of the two groups has to categorise the photos according to a list of Darwin’s six basic emotions – as in Ekman’s experiment. The other half categorise the photos any way they want. The result shows that the Americans and Africans get the same result when they choose from the list, but different results when they can choose freely. The psychologists conclude that Ekman’s method produces a guided result.
Psychologist Carlos Crivelli also criticises Ekman. He tested people in Mozambique and Papua New Guinea to find that young people from PNG interpret the expression of fear in people with eyes and mouths wide open very differently than do Westerners. They see it as a threatening expression. In 2017, another team of scientists analysed a total of 50 studies on the link between facial expressions and emotions, concluding that only a small portion of our facial expressions reflect our emotions. Only smiling and laughter were almost always expressions of joy.
If the results are correct, it means that our facial expressions are acquired. They are not instinctively linked with our emotions, and they are not a window on our soul. Indeed, many scientists even think that the primary aim of facial expressions is to manipulate others in order to get our own way.
Many scientists do, however, still support Ekman’s theories, and the truth is probably somewhere in between the two camps. A new approach might help us come closer to the answer. By forming a new face from scratch, we can perhaps learn more about the secrets of our own faces.
Robots face up to the mysteries
It is 2018, 179 years after Charles Darwin began to study facial expressions, and Japanese robot researcher Hiroshi Ishiguro introduces the most recent of his robots, Ibuki.
“Hi, I am Ibuki – meaning life,” says the human-like robot in a boyish voice, which seems to emanate from somewhere other than his silicone mouth.
Ishiguro is one of the world’s leading robot developers. He has a robotic copy of himself, and he works on imitating humans in his robots in order to learn more about being a human being. Ibuki has the face of a 10-year-old boy and moves
his lips, jaw, and eyes as he speaks. In his eyes are cameras which can recognise a face, and he can react with a smile when someone smiles at him. But still, he does not seem human; Ibuki demonstrates how complex our facial expressions are. Other new robots, such as the Shaman of Songs in Disney World, Florida, achieve much more fluid motions, though they are not as independent as Ibuki.
The aim is to make the robots perform realistic motions and to use them at the right times. The first requires a robot able to mimic all the tiniest of motions of the human face. Disney’s Shaman robot is close, thanks to a wealth of moving parts under its skin, but it is not completely successful. The second requires an understanding of how facial expressions are linked with our thoughts. We do not yet quite have this understanding, but scientists hope that the robots can learn from themselves. In 2019 scientists from New York, USA, created a robotic arm that taught itself to move objects. The next step might be a robotic face that can teach itself – and us – the secrets behind the human face.