擅长察言观色的人性格（经济学人察颜观色）
擅长察言观色的人性格（经济学人察颜观色）Or do they? An analysis of hundreds of research papers that examined the relationship between facial expressions and underlying emotions has uncovered a surprising conclusion: there is no good scientific evidence to suggest that there are such things as recognisable facial expressions for basic emotions which are universal across cultures. Just because a person is not smiling the researchers foun
更多文章请关注英文外刊双语阅读
Do not rely on facial expressions for how people are feeling
不要察颜观色
A smile does not always mean someone is happy
微笑并不一定代表着快乐
Aristotle reckoned the face was a window onto a person’s mind. Cicero agreed. Two millennia on facial expressions are still commonly thought to be a universally valid way to gauge other people’s feelings irrespective of age sex and culture. A raised eyebrow suggests confusion. A smile denotes happiness. A frown indicates sadness.
亚里士多德认为，脸是人类心灵的一扇窗户。西塞罗也这么认为。两千年过去了，人们仍然普遍认为，面部表情是衡量他人感受的一种普遍有效的方式，它无关乎年龄、性别和文化的差异。扬眉表示疑惑。微笑表示快乐。皱眉表示悲伤。
Or do they? An analysis of hundreds of research papers that examined the relationship between facial expressions and underlying emotions has uncovered a surprising conclusion: there is no good scientific evidence to suggest that there are such things as recognisable facial expressions for basic emotions which are universal across cultures. Just because a person is not smiling the researchers found does not mean that person is unhappy.
真的如此吗？一项研究对数百篇有关面部表情和潜在情绪之间关系的研究论文进行了分析，最终得出了一个令人惊讶的结论：没有足够的科学证据能够表明，跨文化的基本情绪均有可识别的面部表情。研究人员发现，一个人没有微笑并不代表他不快乐。
As Lisa Feldman Barrett one of the authors of the study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest told the AAAS meeting in Seattle “We surprised ourselves”.
这项研究发表在了《公共利益心理学》杂志上，正如该研究作者之一的丽莎·费尔德曼·巴雷特在于西雅图举行的美国科学促进会上所说的那样，“我们自己也感到惊讶。”
Dr Feldman Barrett is a psychologist at Northeastern University in Boston Massachusetts and along with her colleagues she found that on average adults in urban cultures scowled when they were angry 30% of the time. Which meant that some 70% of the time they did not scowl when angry.
费尔德曼·巴雷特是马萨诸塞州波士顿东北大学的一位心理学家。她和她的同事们发现，城市文化中的成年人在生气时有30％的可能会皱眉。这意味着在大约70％的情况下，他们在生气时并不会皱眉。
Instead they did something else with their faces. People also scowled when they were not angry. “They scowl when they’re concentrating they scowl when someone tells them a bad joke they scowl when they have gas they scowl for lots of reasons ” says Dr Feldman Barrett.
相反，他们的脸上会有其他的表情。人们有时不生气时也会皱眉。费尔德曼·巴雷特说：“人们在集中注意力时会皱眉，在听到冷笑话时会皱眉，在想要放屁时也会皱眉。”
A scowl the researchers concluded is certainly one expression of anger. But it is not the only way people express that emotion. The ambiguous nature of facial expressions was not restricted to anger but seemed valid for all six of the emotional categories that they examined: anger disgust fear happiness sadness and surprise.
研究人员得出结论，皱眉无疑是愤怒的一种表达方式。但它并不是人们表达情感的唯一方式。面部表情的模糊性并不局限于愤怒，而且似乎适用于他们所研究的所有六种情绪：愤怒、厌恶、恐惧、快乐、悲伤和惊讶。
All this raises questions about the efforts of information-technology companies to develop artificial-intelligence algorithms which can recognise facial expressions and work out a person’s underlying emotional state. Microsoft for example claims its “Emotion API” is able to detect what people are feeling by examining video footage of them.
所有这些都让人们对信息技术公司开发可识别面部表情并计算出一个人潜在情绪状态的人智能算法的努力提出了质疑。例如，微软声称其“Emotion API”能够通过检阅视频片段来察觉人们的情绪。
Another of the study’s authors however expressed scepticism. Aleix Martinez a computer engineer at Ohio State University said that companies attempting to extract emotions from images of faces have failed to understand the importance of context.
然而，该研究的另一位作者对此表示怀疑。俄亥俄州立大学的计算机工程师阿历克斯·马丁内斯表示，试图通过面部图像来识别情绪的公司未能理解背景的重要性。
For a start facial expression is but one of a number of non-verbal cues such as body posture that people use to communicate with each other. Machine recognition of emotion needs to take account of these as well.
首先，面部表情只是人们用来相互交流的诸多非语言暗示之一，比如还有身体姿势。机器想要识别情绪也需要考虑到这些因素。
But context can reach further than that. Dr Martinez cited an experiment in which participants were shown a close-up picture of a man’s face which was bright red with his mouth open in a scream.
但背景的影响远不止于此。马丁内斯引用了一项实验，研究人员向参与者展示了一名男子的面部特写照片，照片中的男子脸部通红，张着嘴呈现出尖叫的样子。
Based on this alone most participants said the man was extremely angry. Then the view zoomed out to show a football player with his arms outstretched celebrating a goal. His angry-looking face was in fact a show of pure joy.
仅凭照片来看，大多数参与者认为该男子非常生气。随后视图缩小，显示出一名足球运动员伸出双臂庆祝进球。他那张生气的脸实际上是一种纯粹的喜悦。
Given that people cannot guess each other’s emotional states most of the time Dr Martinez sees no reason computers would be able to. “There are companies right now claiming to be able to do that and apply this to places I find really scary and dangerous for example in hiring people ” he says. “Some companies require you to submit a video CV and then this is analysed by a machine-learning system. And depending on your facial expressions they hire you or not which I find really stunningand not only based on the wrong hypothesis but a dangerous hypothesis.”
鉴于大多数时候人们都无法猜测出彼此的情绪状态，马丁内斯认为计算机没理由能够做到这一点。他说：“现在有一些公司声称能够做到这一点，并将其应用到我认为非常可怕和危险的地方，例如招聘员工，有些公司会要求你提交一份视频简历，然后用机器学习系统进行分析。他们会根据你的面部表情来决定是否雇佣你，我觉得这太令人震惊了，它基于的不仅是一个错误的假设，而且还是一个危险的假设。”
重点单词：
irrespective [ ɪrɪ'spɛktɪv] adj. 不考虑的，不顾的 adv. 不顾地
scepticism [ˈskeptɪsɪzəm] n. 怀疑；怀疑主义
stunning [ˈstʌnɪŋ] adj. 极好的；令人震惊的
更多文章请关注英文外刊双语阅读
