Google’s policy of effacing any human faces visible in Google Street View imagery, applies, de facto, even to faces one might not expect to be effaced. The stated purpose is “to protect the privacy of individuals”. Here’s an example from a holiday poster—showing a face-blurred individual carrying a cross—on the outer wall of a church […]
Tag: faces
Considering the Uncanniness of Cozying Up to Clones
Several researchers who are not themselves clones try to gauge what the reaction of the populace might be if and when they were to encounter a gaggle of clones. Details are in this study: “The clone devaluation effect: A new uncanny phenomenon concerning facial identity,” Fumiya Yonemitsu, Kyoshiro Sasaki, Akihiko Gobara, and Yuki Yamada, PLoS […]
Advocating Adding Laterality to Chernoff Faces
Chernoff Faces, perhaps the most human way of presenting statistical data— the method was invented by Herman Chernoff, thus the name— gained extra expression in this later paper by Bernhard Flury and Hans Riedwyl: “Graphical Representation of Multivariate Data by Means of Asymmetrical Faces.” Bernhard Flury and Hans Riedwyl, Journal of the American Statistical Association, […]
Named-cow researcher recognizes merit in research on sheep recognizing people
“I was asked if, as an Ig Nobel laureate myself, I thought this recent Cambridge sheep study would be a contender for an Ig Nobel award, the prize for science that “first makes you laugh, then makes you think”. Celebrity-spotting sheep might sound funny but the science involved in this study actually isn’t sniggerable.” So writes Catherine Douglas […]
The trouble with emoji: Misinterpreted emotions
The world suffers from miscommunication due to ambiguous interpretation of emoji, explains a soon-to-be-published study: The study is called ” ‘Blissfully happy’ or ‘ready to fight’: Varying Interpretations of Emoji.” Authors Hannah Miller, Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Shuo Chang, Isaac Johnson, Loren Terveen, and Brent Hecht, are in the GroupLens Research group at the University of Minnesota. In the […]
Big Man | Big Mouth (new study)
Would you say that having a big mouth might be a valid cue to leadership selection and success? A new (March 2016) study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology authored by Dr. Daniel E. Re and Professor Nicholas O. Rule of the Social Perception and Cognition Lab, University of Toronto, Canada, suggests that the […]
Partially drunk people can appear more attractive
There’s yet another twist in research news about drunkenness and the perception of beauty. The 2013 Ig Nobel psychology prize was awarded to Laurent Bègue [FRANCE], Brad Bushman [USA, UK, the NETHERLANDS, POLAND], Oulmann Zerhouni [FRANCE], Baptiste Subra [FRANCE], and Medhi Ourabah [FRANCE], for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they […]
A reported discovery about smiling women
The expression on a person’s face might sometimes affect other persons’ perceptions of that person. So suggests this study: “Forming Impressions: Effects of Facial Expression and Gender Stereotypes,” Tay Hack, Psychological Reports, vol. 114, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1-15. The author, at Angelo State University, writes: “In conclusion, the present research adds to existing knowledge […]
Faces in the crowd can make Big Data more valuable
Your ability to spot a weird face might be worth big money in this, the dawning era of Big Data. A statistical technique called “Chernoff faces” transforms mulivariate data — numbers that tend to make people feel numb — into quirky/goofy cartoon faces. Oddball items in the data stand out. You’ll more likely to recognize an […]
Adding a Wink to the Facial Actions Coding System
Ekman isolated the wink, you see. In 1976 the Facial Actions Coding System [FACS] was developed by Paul Ekman and colleague Wallace V. Friesen. It featured in their paper for the inaugural issue of Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, 1(1), pp. 56-75, which was entitled ‘Measuring Facial Movement’. The Facial Action Code was derived from […]