Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

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Happiness = 12 + 6 | Aug 14 2000

Ever hear of Paul Ekman? Me neither. This is unfortunate because Ekman, a seminal figure in the relatively new field of evolutionary psychology, is one of the world’s leading experts on lying, having written or edited nearly two dozen books on the subject, including the not-quite-bestseller, “Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage.” Ekman’s central insight, so far as I can glean it from various synopses of his work, is that the human face betrays emotion in a UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE. Over the past thirty-plus years, Ekman has developed a Facial Action Coding System (FACS), which breaks down human expressions into 46 individual facial movements. Researchers have codified these movements into seven universal emotions: happiness, anger, fear, contempt, disgust, sadness and surprise. According to Ekman, few of us are capable of hiding these expressions. Try as we might, “micro expressions” slip through, revealing our true feelings.

Ekman’s research has many practical applications, most of which I can’t think of right now because I’m not in a very diabolical mood. But get this: scientists in Japan, in an attempt to boast flagging morale among assembly-line workers, have used Ekman’s FACS data to create a robot “co-worker” who, using a camera embedded in her left eye (yes, the robot is a she, complete with wig and dentures), observes her fellows and responds to their emotions with a “near-human expression of empathy.”

In case you were wondering, and I imagine you were, the FACS code for happiness is 12+6. Sadness is 1+4+6+11.