Interesting Test of Recognising Facial Expressions

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Test Your Emotional Intelligence- How well do you read other people?

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizze ... /take_quiz

This is the best test of facial expression recognition I've seen. I got 12/20 but those were mainly wild/lucky guesses. I realised I don't have much of a clue what expressions people are making. Most people look angry to me.

Test yourself! Even if it's just to prove you're autistic.

I got 13/20. I thought I would score a lot higher since I'm always so pathologically vigilant when it comes to facial expressions (when I can actually bear to look at people).

I find it interesting that I mistook happiness for politeness, and mistook pride for contempt. It made me wonder just how much of an effect my self-esteem has on how I interpret facial expressions.

Ooh well done Handa Rei!

It was quite reassuring to me that I am indeed really bad at recognising facial expressions. I can recognise shock/ surprise; anger; sadness but not much else. None of the more subtle ones.

The guy with his face screwed up just made me laugh!

I scored 3 out of 20...some answers I would have chosen weren't listed and some I thought were pretty close - guilt and or shame look a lot alike to me.

Daniel.

Yes, I got guilt/shame/embarrassment mixed up. And contempt/disgust type of thing. And I thought a lot of the expressions were anger.

I wish they'd give us a list at the end what we got wrong and what we mixed up.

2/20


The weirdest thing for me was the explanations. Are people really supposed to know, notice, and use all those little tricks? Do they learn that by instinct, by copying, or by trial and error? I didn't know there were any specific facial rules.

Yes those explanations! I didn't read those. How are we supposed to know and remember all those different rules? Are we supposed to stand there for an hour looking at people's faces? Expressions move too quickly to analyse. My brain doesn't move that quickly when it comes to faces.

I don't know if it's instinct or copying or trial and error.

Although, they have done tests on uncontacted tribes and they naturally recognise: happy, sad, angry, scared and disgusted. Maybe more expressions too. So it seems to be something humans are born with.

I can tell if a person's mouth is turning up or down. And if their eyebrows are doing something. Apart from that, I haven't a clue. Most people look angry or bored IMO.

I read about micro expressions once. Just don't go there, it will fry your brain. There is NO WAY I can see micro expressions.

There was one main feeling that stood out when I saw most of the pictures.

Example: Maybe I saw fear first.

Then, being the microthinker that I am, I analysed them far too much.
I imagined whether they might be masking or faking it.
I tried to look deep in their eyes and ignore all the facial cues that might be fake.
The "fear" face might switch to being "compassion" at hearing someone's bad news.
Then I'd switch.
Usually I was wrong on both guesses (lol), and it was a third thing.

In real time I barely look at faces in the first place, so I have no skill at judging.
If I did look, I wouldn't be able to stare and analyse for that long anyway.

Heaven help me for trying to use those expressions myself.

That's the thing isn't it. We're so used to being wrong that we second guess ourselves and make it worse.

So many times I've gone over expressions and conversations in my mind, trying to work out what exactly happened. I sometimes get it in the end but often I don't. I have to think for days or weeks until I work it out and what I should have done. I don't really do that anymore because it's too tiring.

My processing of social situations is terrible, but as I'm a woman I'm expected to be fantastic at social situations and understand everyone instantly

I scored 16/20.

I didn't even know women were supposed to be better. No one taught me anything about social skills when I was growing up, meaning I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to be good at them. Sadly, that means I didn't know I was supposed to teach my kids either. I think they're both better than I am, but I feel badly if I failed them by lack of awareness. I didn't know I was doing it wrong as a role model or that they were supposed to be taught these skills somehow by osmosis. I think they did fairly well based on how they're received by others, and how I see us as a group in videos. In our family videos they look "normal" to me whereas I look like a catatonic lump of clay. It's really quite noticeable that I'm spaced out and have a vacant stare about me.

When I did the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test for my ASD assessment, the doctor said I had the lowest score she'd ever seen. She's a PhD Neuropsychologist who has worked in Autism assessment and treatment for decades, and she's an Adjunct Professor.

Whoops.





I thought I might do a little better on your test since it was whole faces, but I think that made it even harder.

I did really well, 16/20.

I have spent years working really hard at those “little cues” because I work with kids. Turns out I still can’t see guilt/shame/embarrassment. Also, I felt like those expressions were really exaggerated and real people do not freeze their expressions and let you stare at them like that - surprise disappears real quick!

And my initial thoughts were often not on the list - like that woman being polite? - that looked like suffering to me. But maybe that’s because I feel like if a person is being in a situation where they have to be polite they must be suffering.

I mean, “polite” is not an emotion.

15/20

Proof that learning to draw cartoon expressions eventually will come in handy.

Yeah, Polite confused me too! If I had to name how Polite feels for me, it feels scary and rehearsed.

I was just thinking it would be cool if someone made a regular movie (not an educational film but a real Hollywood movie) that is aimed at an Autistic audience. Whether the actors and characters are autistic doesn't matter, but in the movie everyone would say what they mean, they would have readable or understandable facial expressions (or flat affect, not meaning they're angry), they'd be mute at times, have special interests, and have sensory issues. There'd be no bright lighting or jarring noises in the film but it wouldn't be boring either.

Basically the whole plot and all the characters would be understandable to us, or accessible enough that it wouldn't be hard to understand them. It would show what empathy is like for us -- overpowering on the inside, and often hard to express on the outside. We wouldn't need to struggle to read eyes or gestures or the moral of the story, yet it would still be entertaining to a NT audience and it wouldn't patronise us. It wouldn't even be "about" autism, but we'd finally find our world.

It would also be cool if they could design those tests so the people in the pictures are all Autistic.
If I knew that ahead of time I could judge better, because I'd know they might be masking.

The person who looks scared might very well be doing "Polite", because that's how polite often feels.
I bet their expressions would make more sense and we could read them better.

As it is, we assume the people are NT and I think it intimidates us.
We assume they use their faces differently than we do, so we overthink it.

13/20. I always get anxious doing these tests