Spot the fake smile

Post Reply New Topic

Hi,

How about those aspies who spontaneously become self-conscious
and shy when they meet acquantances on the street? It's automatic
like the fight or flight response. I'm one of those! I can't smile and
only after some moments of conversation then I can smile. People
who know me for some time have accepted this as my trait but those
merely nodding acquantance find me a snob!

Peace.

I have the same problem, sondadareas. Often, I will see the person coming from way far away, and if that is the case, I don't know when the appropriate time to smile or wave is. But that atleast gives me some time to prepare myself to respond. If you're going to pass right by them, do you smile and wave when you see them, or when you come to them?

If I don't see them coming, I usually don't remember to smile until they've already passed me by. When I know someone well enough, I'll call a greeting back to them, but if I don't know them well, usually I just let it slide, and try to remember for next time. The worst thing I do is sometimes if I'm nervous I'll just completely look away, not realizing until afterwards that they probably saw me do that, and interpretted it the wrong way. Yes, sometimes this gives people a bad impression, but I'm lucky enough to look outwardly shy, so people often assume that's the reason.

That's how I understand this: "fake" means conscious, "false" means not sincere. Yes, it is a little bit of a misnomer. Here is an example that fake smiling may be a good thing to do.
Suppose that at some wee hour, let's say 9 am, I am called to come to work because server has crashed. I am torn out of bed, groggy, angry, hungry and generally low functioning. When I arrive at the office I met our secretary, who is a very nice lady. Although I am certainly not in a good mood, I put a fake smile on my face, just for her. The smile is fake - I must force myself to do it - but it is sincere, because I really want to be nice to her. She smiles back, we exchange hi's, and guess what, I feel better after this encounter.


This is of course a different story. Salesmen very often use deceptive techniques that most people are unaware of. It often includes playing on emotions, to which many people fall prey. I think that aspies should be more resistant to such techniques than the general public, because they rely more on logic than emotions (am I right on that?). Also since aspies have the tendency to research before doing anything (as "overanalyzing" discussion evidenced), they will more likely come across the information about salesmen's techniques. And if you know them, it's easy to become impervious. At least this is my experience.


And one back to you:

In the past I was "clinically" shy, and I often did exactly what you describe - look away to avoid an unexpected encounter. But over the years I have built enough confidence to cover my shyness in most cases. Still it is there inside, and shows up sometimes, especially in situations that are new to me. So now my problem is the opposite of yours: people are very surprised when this seemingly funny, outgoing guy suddenly becomes blocked and shy like a mouse!

This reminds me of a scientific article about autistics and NTs and intention and outcome.
I will describe the test.

There is a person A, who has a cup of sugar.
There is a person B, to whom the cup of sugar is given.
It turns out there was not sugar in the cup, instead it was arsenic (pretty stupid mistake) and person B has died.

The question is "Has B commited an immoral deed?"
When the NTs and the people with Asperger's syndrome were posed this question, all (I think) chose Yes, if B knew the cup was filled with arsenic.
When told that B did not know, the NTs chose No, but the people with Asperger's syndrome chose Yes.

Opinions
This was also how I thought about this.
This is also the problem I have with white lies.
The excuse people tend to use for white lies is exactly that: "And even if somebody lies just to create a good mood, what is wrong with that?"
I have an immense moral aversion against all kinds of lying (I see all lying as the worst kind of lying, because lying is bad)
I think that creating a good mood without conflicts is not nearly a good enough excuse to justify lying.

9 points, less than half. Like always. I try but can't learn nothing!

I got a 15 out of 20. I already knew what to look for though......muscles around the eye rather than the actual smile. I don't look at people this intensely in real life though. I was really, really analyzing their eyes. I think a person might think I'm creepy LOL!!

Muscles around eyes, you say? I thought if it's about smile, I should look at lips. So i did

I have to try your looking way

I got 13 out of 20...

5 out of 10 on the first half, and 8 out 10 on the second half.

I started paying attention to the eyes on the last half and the cheeks on the first half. I don't know why I wasn't looking at the eyes, I knew how to do this one already... When children lie, they try to do things like look away, blink awkwardly, don't make eye contact or touch their face. When adults lie, they know not to do any of those things, so the liars are the ones that appear to be staring.

When I was younger I read something about real smiles vs. fake smiles and if you look at the eyes, you will see the muscles under the eye come up and the sides of the eyes may wrinkle. In older individuals, the wrinkles on the sides of their eyes are very pronounced....but you can see it in younger people as well.

I hope I explained that alright.

Possible. I have to try. Is it recognizing the real smiles, yes?

Yes, this is to recognize the real smiles.

I got 13 out of 20, but felt as though I was really guessing a lot and actually smiled back sometimes...geez, which made feel goofy but it was fun. It was weird to watch the end of the smiles as they seemed sort of sinister. I feel like I'm easily duped by a smile, fake or not.

You got 14 out of 20 correct

I already knew to look at the lines around the eyes, and I think that may have actually backfired. It didn't work this time.

I got 12 out of 20. I honestly guessed for many of them -- it's very difficult for me to tell the difference between real and fake smiles. When they asked about what part of the face is most useful in terms of making the distinction, I answered "eyes," because I know that's the "right" answer, but I really don't find any part of the face very informative. This is especially true when I'm looking at the faces of a series of random strangers with no context to associate with the expressions I see.

I dunno if anyone else did this, but I went through the whole test thinking in the back of my mind, "if these people are being asked to smile, then wouldn't all of them be fake? Or are they telling them a joke or something to get a response to gauge it by?"

I got 14 out of 20 despite that I was fighting the urge to click fake for everything.