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The Humintell Blog February 7, 2012

The Powell Family Tragedy

Utah mother of two Susan Powell disappeared in December of 2009 after her husband Josh claimed he had taken their young sons camping in sub-zero temperatures only to return to find his wife missing.

Josh Powell, who had been under severe scrutiny for several years over the disappearance of Susan, had his first in depth television interview late last year. We blogged about a portion of the interview, in which Josh claimed he knew nothing of his wife’s disappearance and readers commented on many red flags and hot spots they saw.

This story took a dramatic turn this past weekend when Josh set fire to his own house with him and his two sons inside, killing all three. Before he took his own life and the life of his sons, he left an emotional voicemail on several family member’s answering machines.

Susan’s sister, Denise Cox had a television interview shortly after the tragedy where she discussed her sister’s missing person case and the brutal murder of her two nephews. The interview can be seen below. It is evident that Denise is quite emotional about the subject.

Denise is also an excellent example of someone who has shifty eyes but is not being deceptive. Notice how she often looks around- sometimes one could mistake this as being deceptive, but this seems to be part of Denise’s baseline behavior.

Remember, lack of eye contact is the biggest myth about liars. In fact, eye gaze has little to do with detecting deception.

Filed Under: Hot Spots, Nonverbal Behavior

The Humintell Blog February 6, 2012

Are You Being Judged On Your Smile?

Are you being judged on your smile?  According to Atlantic.com we could judge people especially our elected representatives on their smiles.

How would one go about judging smiles?  New facial expression recognition technology is paving the way to do just that.

Developer and journalist Dan Nguyen has taken advantage of recent facial expression recognition technology such as Face.com’s facial detection algorithm, the New York Times’ Congress API, and Sunlight Labs’ Congress API to amass images of senators in an effort to organize them according to “Face Coordinates” and then determine via those coordinates the relative smiliness of each senator’s photo.

What exactly that smiliness reveals about a person’s character is up for debate.  Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

In a nut shell these programs measure proportionality of the shapes of eyes, noses, and mouths.

The project, according to Nguyen, is not really intended to help the average Joe reach a decision in regards to electing a government official, but is a teaching tool.  A fun way of explaining and experimenting with programming language.

Be sure to click on the link to the original article to see various images of senator’s smiles!

Filed Under: General, Nonverbal Behavior

The Humintell Blog January 31, 2012

Fetal Facial Expression Research Update

In December Humintell blogged on new research, which posited that facial expressions begin in utero.  The article entitled “Baby Face” delineated that several facial movements begin in the second trimester and enable the formation of all the elements of laughter by the 30th week of pregnancy.

This suggests that the smile is not a reflexive response mimicking a human behavior but rather an independent action.

The National Right to Life News Today has just released additional photos of facial expressions in the womb.  These photos are extremely interesting as they highlight that smiles and perhaps laughter occur even early than thought at around 24 weeks.

Peter Tallack affirms in In the Womb for National Geographic that, “Whatever the fetus is feeling, at 20 weeks she is certainly capable of demonstrating lots of facial expressions. 4D scans have revealed babies not only grimacing but also seeming to smile and even laugh.”

Filed Under: Nonverbal Behavior, Science

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