{"id":1111,"date":"2014-05-01T12:46:13","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T16:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1111"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:48:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:48:25","slug":"your-eyes-can-give-you-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/01\/your-eyes-can-give-you-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Eyes Can Give You Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"eyes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That face. I know that face. How do I know that face? Do I wave? Do I know them that well? Everyone has had that experience where they recognize someone\u2019s face, and you may know absolutely nothing about the person, but you know you\u2019ve seen their face before.<\/p>\n

How can we recognize people\u2019s faces so easily? Facial recognition is a highly specialized process, and is incredibly accurate. Facial features such as the eyes, nose, mouth, the distance between features, and the shapes of features help us to identity a person\u2019s face. \u00a0But when we are in a very emotional situation, are we still as good at facial recognition as we are in regular situations? Past researchers have found that in these strong emotional contexts, positive or negative, facial recognition becomes slower and much less accurate. Emotional information must change the way we recognize faces. So which facial feature is the most important to facial recognition in strong emotional experiences?<\/p>\n

To figure out which facial feature is most accurate in facial identification, in 2011 two researchers, K. F. Ryan, and N. Z. Schwartz, conducted an experiment using computer-generated faces in strong positive and negative emotional contexts, as well as neutral contexts. For example, a positive scene would be a face in a nature background, a negative scene would be a face committing an act of violence, and a neutral scene, as shown in the figure below, would consist of a face with an everyday object, like a tape dispenser.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled\"<\/a>


A look into the neutral face recognition scene of the experiment<\/p><\/div>\n

In a select trial of this experiment, one of the three scenes would appear on the screen, then after a few seconds a face would appear in a random location in the scene. Then, the screen would turn bright green to make sure the person wasn\u2019t just rehearsing what the face looked like in their head. After that, three alternative faces would appear on the screen, and the participant was asked to pick the face they just saw. Yet none of the alternative faces were exactly the same as the first face. The alternative faces were identical to the target face except one of their features was manipulated slightly, such as the eye shape or nose shape, as seen in the figure below.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>


Slight manipulations in eye shape and nose shape<\/p><\/div>\n

In the highly emotional contexts, participants made fewer errors in eye shape than in neutral contexts, and made the most errors in regard to nose shape. This means that participants tended to choose the alternative face that had the same eye shape, not nose shape, as the first face in an emotional context. This shows that people tend to remember eye shape most accurately during face recognition in a strong emotional scene, and usually overlook the shape of people\u2019s noses.<\/p>\n

This may sound weird, but when you apply this phenomenon to real life, it makes sense. We look into other people\u2019s eyes when we are talking to them, so we pay a lot of attention to their change in shape. What can someone\u2019s nose tell you? Though a crooked nose can indicate previous injury or maybe a past hockey player, it doesn\u2019t tell you much about someone\u2019s emotions. Yet many different eye shapes can reveal emotion; bright eyes can indicate happiness, wincing eyes can express pain, and wide-open eyes can show surprise. We rely on the shape of other\u2019s eyes in order to recognize someone as well as infer the emotional context of the situation, especially if it is a strong expressive scene. We could care less about someone\u2019s nose shape when we are highly emotional and have a brief amount of time for face recognition.<\/p>\n

These results can also explain some of the limitations of eyewitness memory. For example, if you witness a crime, you are in a highly negative emotional situation. In this emotional scene, you are converting the criminal\u2019s face to memory differently than you would in a neutral context. You would tend to pay more attention to the criminal\u2019s eye shape because their eyes are giving you more information about the situation than their nose or other facial features would. Later, if you try to identify the criminal on the basis of nose shape, you are more likely to commit errors because noses are ignored in strong emotional scenes. But if you identify the criminal based on the shape of their eyes, you will most likely choose the right person who committed the crime. So criminals beware; your eyes can give you away.<\/p>\n

To read the whole article, click HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

References<\/b><\/p>\n

Ryan, K. F., & Schwartz, N. Z. (2013). Face recognition in emotional scenes:\u00a0Observers remember the eye shape but forget the nose. Perception<\/i>,\u00a042<\/i>(3), 330-340. doi:10.1068\/p7359<\/p>\n

Ten ways your eyes give you away. (2014). Retrieved April 18, 2014, from MSN Healthy\u00a0Living website: http:\/\/healthyliving.msn.com\/diseases\/vision\/10-ways-your-eyes-give-you-away<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That face. I know that face. How do I know that face? Do I wave? Do I know them that well? Everyone has had that experience where they recognize someone\u2019s face, and you may know absolutely nothing about the person, but you know you\u2019ve seen their face before. How can we recognize people\u2019s faces so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80215,80218],"tags":[117417,130349,130381],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3799,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions\/3799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}