Genuine or Fake?

So I took BBC’s “Spot the Fake Smile” test and scored a respectable 18 out of 20. I was probably only able to score so high because of the technique of watching the eyes that Dan Pink explains in A Whole New Mind. I just thought it was pretty ironic that I managed to do so well in an activity typically considered to require a strong “right brain,” using a seemingly “left brain” methodology.


I feel ya

I feel ya. As in I feel ya man, I understand. That’s because of empathy. I understand feelings, emotions, sadness and happiness that you convey.

Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness)

Empathy is not easily overlooked. It’s not only one of the things that makes us human, but it ties us together. In Daniel Pink’s chapter Empathy, he uses a very awesome example. He shows two pictures, side by side. In one picture, he’s smiling. In the other picture, he’s also smiling. The difference is that one is a genuine smile caused by something humorous someone said while the other is a forced smile, when there’s nothing funny to laugh or smile at.

What’s interesting is that I was immediately able to point out which is which. This is the concept of empathy. Humans can express their emotion in amazing ways and other humans are able to pick up on that, like a universal language.

For this chapter, there are a few exercises that interested me. The first was the activity on Volunteer work. All it requires is for you to go volunteer. Although this isn’t something I can go out and simply do as an assignment, I think it’s an important concept. My mother has always encouraged volunteer work. In high school, we were required to turn in 10 hours of community service per year. That’s not bad at all. By the end of the year, I had turned in 110 hours of community service. It’s not about the hours, it’s about what it means.

Volunteer work is a basic way to show that you care. It shows other’s that emotion. By volunteering, you’re identifying with less fortunate people. Even if it’s something insignificant like picking up trash on the side of the road, people will see that and empathize with the wonderful, selfless work that you’re doing. For that reason, and because I’ve learned that helping others is often the best way to help yourself, I will never stop volunteering. I remember that one of the happiest, most enjoyable experiences in my life was pain-staking manual labor on a mission trip for hours on end. It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it.

Another exercise that I really truly did identify with is the exercise on cards. It says that instead of buying cards, try making them by hand. This shows that you care. This is almost a verbatim repeat of what my mom always told me as a child. I never use pre-made birthday cards. It’s not because I’m cheap, but because of what my mom taught me. I used to do it, not complain about it, nor care about it. It didn’t make a difference, but I didn’t truly understand. One year for my birthday, I got a large amount of cards, as usual. But my favorite was the piece of paper with a picture of the person and very sloppy handwriting and drawings in crayon, from my little sunday school student. The effort makes one identify and feel empathy.

Here’s the way I used to love to do my birthday cards (colors unavailable). This is about what they looked like when I was doing them as a younger child…


I love you forty-eight.

How much do you love me? … I love you 48.

This does not work. Some things are just best left unmeasured. And of all the things in the world, at least the right brain stuff must be isolated from numbers and tests (especially multiple choice tests!).

Having said that, I scored a 48 on the EQ test (and got a message that said most men scored a 42 and women 47, which means that

Measuring empathy. Image source: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/What-is-the-Value-of-Your-Social-Media-Assets-and-is-it-Worth-Measuring.jpg

according to that test, I am more “female” than most women – a direct insult to my masculinity!), although I’m not quite sure I answered all the questions correctly. After reading the chapter, my responses were obviously biased.

Tests (and their irrelevance) aside, the chapter on Empathy in Dan Pink’s ‘A Whole New Mind’ was my favorite thus far. Pink does point out that this quality will be important in the new Conceptual Age. More importantly though, unlike everywhere else in the book where he constantly preaches why the six senses will be important for professionals to survive in the the new age, as if the sole purpose of acquiring these new qualities is to establish successful businesses, he actually mentions somewhere that empathy is “much more than a vocational skill necessary for surviving twenty-first century labor markets. It’s an ethic for living”.

And indeed it is. But whether it can be acquired by learning “techniques” to analyse faces is another matter altogether. I think that such a quality comes, and should come, naturally in the sense that one must not consciously be analyzing expressions to be empathetic. Becoming a better person and having a genuine connection with others are prerequisites.

Considering that as the sole criteria, my score of 48 does sort of seem reasonable, masculine or not. I may personally be on the anti-social side, but I do possess the ability to understand and decipher any other person’s state of mind without that person saying anything about it.

I may not have developed all the remaining right-brain senses that Pink mentions in his book. But this, at least, is one that I’m fairly good at – and I’m proud of it.


Testing for Something More

Dan Pink encouraged us to take a series of tests to calculate our empathy levels, ability to spot genuine smiles and judge eye expressions.

For the Empathy Quotient test:

http://tinyurl.com

My Empathy Quotient was 36 which is above average for males.  Meaning I am more of a left brained thinker and have an overall “male brain.”

For the Spot the Fake Smile test:

http://tinyurl.com/2u7sh

My score for the spot the fake smile was 18.  This test was by far the highest scoring for me.  This came to a surprise to me because while I was taking it I was lacking confidence in my answers.  I thought this test was going to be the hardest.

For the Mind in the Eyes test:

http://tinyurl.com/ckrj3

I fell at a nice average number of 26 for this test.  I found this test to be the most boring because the eyes were starting to look alike after the first few questions.

Overall I was happy with my results.  I think I underestimated my ability at spotting fake smiles, maybe this talent will come in handy later in life.  Reading facial expressions in the eyes is something I will have to practice.  If what Dan Pink says about empathy in this chapter is true, then I will have to work on becoming more “female brain.”

What about you?

What were your scores on these tests?

Post your scores and see how you compare!


Hand Made Card

The Empathy section of Dan Pink’s section stood out to me, as expected. Post-discussion of Joan Halifax’s TedTalk I kinda had a feeling this section would.

Reading the section not only stood out to me but I actually had fun doing the exercise for once. I made a home made card for my big brother in my fraternity. He’s helped me a lot during pledge-ship. While at first I thought of it as childish, I later thought about the emotions I have had and truly how much he has meant to me throughout this period.

I inserted a shot of the cover, obviously my artistic skills are lacking, but that is not what matters. I truly do need to thank my big brother for all he has done. I will likely hand him the card at sometime this week, well maybe not, but I will thank him at some point this week. I will later post his reaction.


Test Yourself

In Daniel Pink’s chapter “Empathy,” he describes empathy as
the ability to imagine yourself in someone’s position and know what they are
feeling. He starts off the chapter by describing a scene and then saying that a
sign of empathy is yawning, as contagious yawning is a primitive empathetic
mechanism. Now it may be the fact that I barely got 3 hours of sleep last
night, or maybe I’m just a really empathetic guy; but either way I yawned quite
a lot during that passage.

At the end of the chapter I decided to do the exercise entitled “Test Yourself.” The
individual exercises were somewhat short, so I picked a couple of them. First I
took the empathy test, which measured empathy based on a series of questions. A
lot of these questions had to do with the process of things, and how we thought
about different things. The score was out of 80, with the average male score
being a 30 and the average female score being a 24. As the scores get higher,
it indicates less empathy. I scored a 33 on the test, which means that I am
slightly less empathetic than the average male.

This result was actually surprising, as I consider myself an empathetic person in
most areas. But as I thought more deeply about the results I came to the
conclusion that I am very empathetic person on some issues and very not
empathetic on other issues.

For the second activity I took a second test where you are shown videos of people
smiling, and you have to determine whether their smile is genuine or not. This exercise
allows you to read facial expressions and use different clues about muscles in
the face to determine whether the smile is real. I got 16 out of the 20 faces
correct, which shows that I am fairly good at recognizing facial features and
reading people’s emotions.

Daniel Pink’s definition of empathy is very important, and after doing some of these
activities, I will be more aware of its effect on everyday life and attempt to
show more empathy towards others.


Empathy and Eyes

I always thought empathy was about sympathizing with people, but after reading Dan Pink I realized that empathy is so much more than that. Pink said, “Empathy isn’t sympathy- that is, feeling bad for someone else. It is feeling with someone else, sensing what it would be like to be that person.” After reading this, I realized how important empathy is. People don’t like to just have someone feeling sorry for them, they want someone to actually feel what they are going through. Through this reading, and the compassion video, I have noticed that we need leaders to be able to be empathetic. How are they supposed to get us through hard times when they cannot even feel what we are going through?

Empathy also has a lot to do with facial expressions. If you do not feel any empathy for someone, you won’t have a genuine facial expression. In psychology I learned about the same experiment Pink described in his book about Ekman’s experiment. Ekman went to many different countries to see if people could recognize the what facial expressions were being expressed in photos of Americans. Everyone guessed the same. He decided to go to New Guinea, where there would not be any Western influence, to see if the results are the same. This showed that facial expressions are universal. I was really curious to see if this would be true for me, too. I decided to to the first empathy exercise, Test Yourself. There were four links of where you could test how well you can decipher facial expressions.

The first link I went to was to see if you could tell if someone had a genuine smile or not. There were twenty faces and you got to see a video of them smiling. I went through the quiz, and it was not too bad. I got 18 out of 20 right, which isn’t too bad. The only problem is, in psychology we learned how to figure out a fake or real smile. The easiest way to figure it out is to see if the person has a crinkle on the sides of their eyes. I got to see if my psychology teacher was right, but I did not get to see if Ekman’s experiment really worked for me. Since I kind of cheated, I decided to try the next link.

The next link was 36 pictures of eyes and you had to determine what facial expression they had from a list of given expressions. I had absolutely no help from psychology on this one. I was on my own trying to figure out how in the world I could possibly figure out if someone was amused or joking from just a pair of eyes. I honestly thought it was a little difficult.  The average score people get on this is from 22-30. If you are awful at decoding facial expressions you get a score of less than 22, and if you are great at it, a score of over 30. I was really shocked to find out my score was 32. I did not realize how much eyes can give away a person’s facial expression, and I am really glad that I can actually do it.

Dan Pink’s section on empathy made me realize how I should try to be less symapthetic and try to put myself in other people’s shoes. I also know how to make my facial expressions show that I am really genuine when I am feeling empathetic for someone, and that I am not putting on a fake smile. I know now that when someone does not seem genuine to me, they most likely are not. Being empathetic and genuine are things people should learn to be, so that we can all understand the problems we all have to deal with.

 

photo from clip art


Put a Smile On!

“You’re never fully dressed without a smile!” Cute little redheaded Annie told us this important lesson at a young age. No matter what you are feeling, put a smile on! She does not seem to care that this smile could be genuine or fake. As adults in the real world, should we worry about the fact that our friends, family, and society may be wearing a false front everyday? I say yes!

Annie says, "You're never fully dressed without a smile!"

 

I performed the spot the fake smile test in which you watch 10 second clips of 20 different people smiling. I correctly identified 14 out of 20 smiles, which is way above the average ability. Most people do not know how to decipher the difference between a real smile and a fake smile because they simply focus on whether they see a display of pearly whites and curled up lips in front of them. The test asked which part of the face shows if the smile is genuine or not and I correctly identified this as the eyes. I will admit, I learned this from watching countless seasons of America’s Next Top Model. Tyra taught me well!

 

I decided to test myself and took one photo of me ‘fake’ smiling and one photo of me genuinely smiling. In order to get a true emotion I thought about a funny and happy memory to get my eyes as well as mouth in the correct form. My results were consistent with the scientific findings of the differences in real and fake smiles.

 

In my fake smile, my eyes are open and do not contract. This is because the brain willingly contracts the mouth muscles because it has been taught to associate ‘open and curled mouth’ with smiling.

'Fake' Smile

 

In my genuine smile, my eyes are far more intense, contracted, and have that happy ‘sparkle’ to them.  At least I like to think so! Scientists use the eye contractions as the true way to measure a real smile because these muscle movements are less voluntary and occur with the sudden emotion that evokes a smile.

'Genuine' Smile

 

I found this exercise important because it worries me that many people put on fake smiles that others cannot always recognize as ‘covers.’ If someone is not feeling well, they should not continuously put up a false front and pretend like everything is just peachy. It is ok to feel sad, anxious, or stressed at times. It is also ok to share these less than sunny emotions with someone else. Usually people tend to feel better once they open up to another individual. This relates to Dan Pink’s empathy evaluation. Empathy is good for society because people are comforted when they receive empathy from others and in return, the giver feels satisfied by being able to connect and soothe another person.

 

While fake smiles are good for photos and making a good impression, I feel that people should not hide their true emotions to close family and friends. When emotions are bottled up, extreme and usually negative consequences can occur. So to Annie, I say you can be fully dressed without a smile, but you may need to phone a friend to help you ‘zip-up.’ :)

 

Images courtesy of Glossop Operatic and Dramatic Society and Christine Proctor


Testing My Empathy

I decided to test myself to see how good I am at finding “fake smiles” with the BBC test. 14 out of 20 correctly spotted. Not bad, but it still shows the difficulties people have in detecting fake smiles. Out of the six smiles I was unable to correctly identify, three of them were actually genuine while three of them were fake. So its not as if I’m more confused by fakes than by genuine smiles, it seems I am equally confused by both types.

The next test I took was the “Mind in the Eyes Test”, which showed different pictures of peoples eyes (and just their eyes) and asked me to choose between four choices of the possible mood the person was in. Out of thirty six questions, I got twenty eight correct. With an average range from twenty two to thirty, I feel as if I am able to judge emotions only from the eyes well enough, however I am not out of the ordinary in this. This seems like an odd test for empathy as looking at ones eyes and recognizing what they are feeling seems easier for someone who is more observant rather than just more empathetic.

One final test to round out the group was the “Empathy Quotient”. After answering several questions, I was given a score from 0 to 80. My score? 28. The normal score for any male? 42. Well, what am I to say to this? That I lack empathy? It’s entirely possible if empathy is being defined by sixty simple questions. It’s entirely possible that I am not empathetical in the same ways as people. It’s difficult to say though, as this is the only “empathy” test I have ever taken in my life. It does not seem very promising sadly.


Empathy

 

Hello once again my fellow kitchen-mates.  I will be your chef today, and now let’s see what kind of cookies we have baking:

 

After reading the chapter ‘Empathy’, I once again, felt nothing towards the subject. I found it a little more uninteresting than previous chapters, which of course meant that the exercise I was to perform was not a thrilling one.  Reading this chapter might have been bland because I can already relate to people in my own way, so reading a new way just kind of seemed unnecessary. Although I do have to agree, relating to people is necessary in both business and social incidences. It is important socially because it helps you listen to people and understand how they feel, and when you understand how they feel, you can often see a clear way to help that person. It is important in business because it helps you get in touch with how they customer is feeling, and then you can ask yourself questions like: “Why would I use this product?” “How does it help my situation?” “What would I prefer instead?”

 

The exercise I chose to talk about is the one where you make someone a card instead of buying one. I didn’t actually perform this exercise, but I have done it in the past several times.Making personal cards affects me in two ways.

 

First, it brings out my creative side once again. I am not satisfied by simply writing a phrase and signing my name. I usually write a funny little anecdote and illustrate a picture to go along with it.

 

Second, it has always made my mother very happy to receive a hand-made card rather than a store-bought card, and that also makes me happy.

 

Well readers, that’s all the cookies we had baking in the oven tonight. Stay tuned.