100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People

71. People can Tell When a smile is Real or Fake More Accurately with Video

Research on smiling started as far back as the mid-1800s. A French doctor named Guillaume Duchenne used electrical currents with research subjects. He would stimulate certain facial muscles and then take pictures of the expressions that people made (Figure 71.1). This was painful and many of the pictures look like the people are in pain.

Figure 71.1. Guillaume Duchenne took photos of people whose facial muscles were electrically stimulated

Real or Fake?

Duchenne identified two different types of smiles. Some smiles involve contraction of both the zygomatic major muscle ...