Social Engineering Blogs

The Humintell Blog January 17, 2012

Facial Expressions as Poker Tells

By Paul D. from www.pokerjunkie.com

Reading tells in poker is as much science as it is art form. While many poker pros will tell you that physical tells mean very little at the highest levels of the games, for the everyday poker player, they can still provide a valuable resource.

There are a few common microexpressions (or facial expression) that you will spot in many lower stakes and inexperienced poker players. Let’s look at a few.

A common microexpression that can be picked up on is when a player catches a card on the board that makes their hand. If you look carefully their eyes just slightly open wider as to say “that’s it!” (Perhaps an expression of surprise?) It is very brief and if you are not watching them, you will miss it. Something that goes in tandem with this microexpression is that the player may either look instinctively at their chips or may quickly glance at you. However, for those that just continue to stare ahead, the slight “bingo look” will give them away.

Adversely, another tell similar to the “bingo look” is when a player misses their intended card on the board. Let’s assume they are drawing to a straight or a flush and their draw fails to get there. When the river card hits, they might ever so slightly squint or slightly frown their brow. Another variation could be a hard blink that is noticeably different and in some cases may be hard enough to make them nod a bit. This is many times a clear indication that they missed their draw and are disappointed in the result.

One final expression is commonly seen in conjunction with bluffing. The river card comes and as the player bets, they let an ever so slight smirk. Chances are that they are bluffing. Some people when they lie will give off a slight smile like they are getting away with something.

Keep in mind that the above microexpression tells are best used at lower limits and against truly inexperienced players. Those types of players are not taking poker games seriously and are not truly worried over profits. As you come across more experienced players, they will tend to not exhibit these traits as frequently, and if they do, you then have to figure out whether they are using them to try and fool you.

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The Social Engineering Blog January 17, 2012

A Facial Expression for Anxiety?

MedicalXpress is reporting on a paper that suggests a facial expression for anxiety:

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London have, for the first time, identified the facial expression of anxiety. The facial expression for the emotion of anxiety comprises an environmental scanning look that appears to aid risk assessment.

Per the abstract, researchers presented 8 volunteers with emotional scenarios and had them pose facial expressions. Photographs and videos of the posed expressions were shown to 40 participants. The participants were asked to match the emotional scenarios and to provide a label for the expression. 18 separate participants were then asked to match the labels provided by the first group to the photographs of the posed expressions.

A majority of the participants labeled a posed expression for an ambiguous threat (e.g. seeing a predator’s footprints) as anxiety. The posed expression for an unambiguous threat (e.g. actually seeing the predator) was correlated with the label of fear.

According to the study, the facial expression for anxiety included “eye darts” and “head swivels”. Since “eye darts” and “head swivels” aren’t actual movements, I’m hazarding a guess that they meant turning the head and eyes. You can find the original paper here, and see the movie used in the study here.

I’m sure Paul Ekman,David Matsumoto,and Maggie Pazian can find a lot of things to explore further, but I noticed a few items of interest right off the bat:

If you look at the “anxiety expression” in the movie, it includes more than just turning the head and eyes. Notably there is a sucking in of the lower lip (AU 28 1), and the subject appears to lean backward after the scanning (which could be interpreted as a flight response.)
I find it interesting that the facial expression is described in terms of multiple distinct movements, yet the second set of participants were only given still photographs. I’d be curious to see the photographs that were used.
The researchers did not claim this to be a universally recognized expression. Although they did suggest a threat response as a possible source of motivation.

While this is definitely interesting, remember that it is just one study. There needs to be additional research and scientific inquiry before reaching a conclusion.

UPDATE: Humintell has posted some thoughts on the paper.

Fingerprint: F04E8E7D2C2310EE4D445C0B2377D0AA

Notes:

Actions units other than AU 28 are also present ↩

Hotspot and Facial Expression Resources

Here are a couple of resources to help with recognizing hotspots and facial expressions of emotion.

Humintell has compiled a list of videos with examples of microexpressions, hotspots, gestures, and emotions.
Here at Social Exploits we’ve been slowly building a library of “interesting faces”. The collection includes various facial expressions of emotion from a variety of cultures. 1

If you have anything you’d like to see added to this list, let us know.

Fingerprint: 8796436E15AD44EED45758CE7D8EAB22

Notes:

Many of the images also make good material for practicing FACS coding. ↩