Our Facial Expressions Don’t Actually Give Away Too Much

So it turns out we all have better poker faces than we realized.

In a new study by Ohio State University, research found that facial expressions might not be reliable indicators of emotion.

In the study, researchers analyzed four million facial expressions from people in 35 different countries.  Also, they found that any attempts to figure out what those people were feeling were “almost always wrong.”

As a result, this held true whether people were trying to interpret other people’s facial expressions or by using facial expression recognition technology.

Dr. Aleix Martinez, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at The Ohio State University says, “Everyone makes different facial expressions based on context and cultural background.  And it’s important to realize that not everyone who smiles is happy. Not everyone who is happy smiles. I would even go to the extreme of saying most people who do not smile are not necessarily unhappy. And if you are happy for a whole day, you don’t go walking down the street with a smile on your face. You’re just happy.”