Spot the fake smile

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10/20. I think maybe I should have not just looked at the mouth. I didn't think of looking at other parts of the face.

4/20

Yeesh I suck

13/20, you can usually tell by looking at the eyes. If they're squinting, then it's probably a real smile.

9/20 rofl
but I'm practicing my fake smile now. thanks for the helpful hints at the end!

I dunno about the rest of you but I dont worry about whether a smile is fake or not.

I just take them at face value (forgive the pun) because whether they are intentional or subconcious a smile still means something and its the thought that counts.

If they are trying to be deceitful then they'll have to do more than just smile anyways so might as well give people the benefit of the doubt until you have a concrete reason to be suspicious.

Spot The Fake Smile
Results
You got 12 out of 20 correct

this thing is crap.... i swear only 1/2 of em are even making ANY kind of facial expression at all.... not askin for people to have ear-to-ear grins on them before i decide whether it's fake or not... but at least have the corners of your mouth turned up! that's what a smile is, isn't it? i feel like most anyone would do crappy on that test.

edit: ok, now i'm going off! all those pics that they have at the end, when they tell you whether or not you got the person right or wrong.... those are not the pics they used in the test itself. i was looking over the results thinking-- how the crap did i get THAT one wrong?!?! when i scrolled back through my browser screen shots... i saw that the actual test used completely different pictures of each person. something like 80% of my people didn't even show teeth in their pic... yet the ones at the end seemed more obvious... and they practically ALL showed their teeth.

WTF O.o?

Spot The Fake Smile
Results
You got 14 out of 20 correct

I also looked at only the lips. I felt like I was just guessing blindly, so I was surprised I got that many correct.

16/20

Okay, in particurly the woman with the painted-looking face, you can easily hear "I secretly hate you" in the way the mouth seems to move through some practiced, obligatory motion. It's really ugly and overly pert. To aid in detecting this sort of fake smile, ask yourself if you have a suppressed urge to brick the woman in the face. Seriously, man, women seem to be adept at saying "I think you're an idiot" while saying the opposite to the unobservant. Catching them at it is the most satisfying feeling in the world. Punting them would be more satisfying if I couldn't be prosecuted for it.

One of the least difficult is the standard "since you said so" smile, which is most exemplified in the black guy. He doesn't mean anything by it. He's just giving an obligatory smile, not really caring if you can detect it as a fake. No hidden agenda, really, just an average sort of person.

Most beloved, the "make it go away" grimace. They look like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Seriously, man, but you gotta hand it to these guys: at least they mean well by it. They're actually trying to give a genuine smile in this case, unfortunately resulting in a grimace that any idiot can detect as fake. They just look like frightened animals.

In one case, however, one can easily mistake a real smile for a grimace. The ones who shake their heads in an attempt to show disapproval are TRYING to tell you the smile doesn't mean anything, suppressing it as quickly as possible. Odds are high you've just pitched a real stinker of a joke, and they're trying to tell you it "isn't funny" ("is unsophisticated," in aspie's terms). They tend to be a bit shy about expressing their emotions, but they're an open book to the even mildly observant. Most of them are nice people.

Unfortunately, some people know how a real smile feels on the face and can emulate it with some effort. Sometimes, you can catch the muscles twitching, but it's a high difficulty rating. It's a grimacer who went out and practiced in front of a mirror for a while. It's a genuine attempt at a smile, and it comes off pretty well. Just take it as it's meant.

Lastly, sometimes, people actually are trying to express a positive emotion, but some sub-conscious part of the brain senses the smile looks a bit lousy, so they reinforce it with an up and down motion of the head to signal approval. If you're having trouble delivering a good smile even when you mean it, you can use this motion as a helper stim.

Use these guys to practice.

15/20

I think i remember doing this test before, and doing poorly. I remembered, this time, what I had read after doing the previous test, and this time I looked right into the eyes to figure it out. A bit easier that way, but there's no way I could look at smiling people in the real world and notice such subtlety...

16/20

7/20

I'm a bit surprised how high most people are scoring.

14 out of 20 correct. I was thinking maybe the people who were laughing were more genuine.

18/20 O_o

I could mostly tell because they seem lind of... blank after a few seconds if it's fake. It seems like they're TRYING to hang it there.