The BBC Science and Nature page has published a test of recognizing genuine and fake smiles. Any interested readers may check it out here. HT: Cognitive Daily. The experiment is Paul Ekman’s, of the University of California at Berkeley. Semi-spoiler below the fold.
Research on genuine v. fake smile recognition has revealed that we are really bad at detecting fake smiles. At least one possible explanation for this is it might be easier for us to get along with other folks if we don’t know what others are feeling. People may choose to ignore visual cues.
Other psychological research has shown that we’re really good at detecting cheaters. And that same research has pointed to a special “cheater” module in the mind, which has been attacked by others, such as Fodor (2000).
Why are we so good at detecting cheaters in reasoning tasks and not so good at detecting fake smiles? I imagine that it must have to do with the differences in sensory modalities and the cognitive reasoning functions, but I’m not positive. What other explanation could there be for the distinction?
