September 2, 2010 • 26 mins
An emoticon is a series of punctuation marks used to draw a picture and convey an emotion. But how did these emoticons come about, and why do they seem so universal? In this podcast, Robert and Allison explore the science behind facial expressions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to stuff from
the Science Lab. This is Alison madam Out, the science
editor at how stuff works dot com. And this is
Robert Lambs, science writer at how stuff works dot com.
(00:23):
And you know we um we communicate a lot at work,
uh via email? We do. Yeah, even though we're just,
I don't know, a few yards away from each other.
We do. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they have the habit of
um popping over your cube wall and annoying you, but
only from the right side. Well, you know, so much
as annoying me as just shocked me because I always
have my headphones in and so yes, you do so
(00:45):
jamming out in your cube writing. I have a hard
time figuring out how you jam out and right at
the same time, I don't know how I would write
if I didn't jam out. It's the only way to
do it. Listening to music with words doesn't that to
strack to you know, I can't listen used to when
I had a more brainless job and I was doing
and like pagination for a newspaper, that I could listen
to the whole podcasts and you know, where their discussions
and stuff and and you know, and and I can
(01:08):
do my job, but like here, as long as it's
not somebody giving me a lecture, you know. Yeah, most
of the lyrics to the things I listened to aren't
really that deep anyway. So sometimes we do communicate by email,
and uh, you you're you throw in an emoticon sometimes
in there. Yeah, I'll throw it in emoticon just too.
It's kind of like real writing, in my opinion, shouldn't
(01:29):
have a lot of exclamation points a streamer. Yeah, but
sometimes you're doing a short email, you know, it's like
an exclamation point can make all the difference in in
the enthusiasm level, you know. Uh. And likewise, if you're
not too sure about about how your you know, words
are going to be received by the recent recipient, uh,
you know, you throw on a little smiley face or
(01:51):
I don't really use said faces in in work emails,
but but sometimes there's a little like annoyed one, you know,
where you do like the you know, the two eyes
and then kind of like a sideways kind of um,
you know mouth. But I'm never really sure when to
throw it in a moticon, to be honest, have I
ever sent one used on an email to you. Yeah,
like you were saying earlier, you just you rarely emote anyway,
(02:14):
basically a robot. But you know it's like as a writer,
I feel like I can generally say exactly what I
want to say. The email is a tricky method of communication. Yeah,
sometimes you gotta shoot him off fast. You don't have
a lot of time. And it's the same with like text.
You know, you know you you just you know you.
You want to convey the message quickly and non starting
an argument, so you just be like, you know, you're
(02:35):
just throwing a smiling So tell us a little about
the history of the emoticon. No, this is this is
actually pretty interesting. It is. Yeah, we can pinpoint the
exact moment when emoticon sprang into existence, and that was
even four am on September nine, And that was thanks
to you, gentlemen, and Professor Scotty Falman Carnegie Mellon. And
(02:58):
he was suggesting their use. He was talking about the
limits of online humor and how you know to really
get across comments that are meant to be taken lately
and said, so he said, and I quote, I proposed
the following character sequence for joke markers. Um, you can't see,
so I will tell you. It's the the smiley face,
the colon dash parenthesy and read it sideways. So let
(03:23):
me read that to you. Aain. I proposed the following
character sequence for joke markers, and he gave an emoticon
and then he said, read it sideways. Yeah. Now he
included the knows I rarely include the notes. Yeah, yeah,
so I used a simplified version. But this was this
was early in the emoticon creation process, and it's really
really skyrocketed since then. As I think everybody knows, there's
just and there's a huge array of emoticons you can
(03:46):
whip out in uh in your daily email correspondences aside
from just smiley frownie brownie. I like how they all
get the e. Yeah, there's there's a vampire one where
blood suck your Yeah. I don't know when you would
use that. And there are different ones in Japan too, right, yeah,
I mean especially when you have a different well, actually
(04:07):
I saw a chart where it's like in the Japanese
emoticons have a tendency to they tend to want to
make there's more um horizontal instead of vertical. And and
then also when you get into other languages, you have
more characters and you can really create crazy emoticons that
like look like ogre faces and and cats and well
cats and the cat one you can actually do uh
with just it's like an equal sign and then ah,
(04:29):
what's the carrot? Yeah, like a carrot and then a
dot and then a carrot, then an equal sign. What
wila you have? Like a have you used that one before?
Are you pretty psyched to use it? Yeah? I don't
know when I'm gonna, you know, unless I just start,
like if after text my wife would be like, did
you feed the blank? And then I've thrown the mooticon
for the cat. But that's longer than typing out you know,
texting cat. Yeah, but we do that all the time.
(04:50):
It's like around here, Um, you know, when people ride
how stuff works, at least in the office, they'll put
HSW because it's shorter on paper. But then you hear
people saying, yeah, we really need to think about hs
W and then you're like, that's not shorter. You didn't
save any syllables and saying hs DEB instead of how
stuff works. That's true. People should just be rational. Um. So, yeah,
(05:11):
like we were saying, emoticons are awfully handy when you
don't have the ability to convey your tone or your feeling.
And yeah, they help out when our voices can't do
the same. And uh and and I think one of
the even more important things, and what we're really going
to talk about in this podcast, um, is that they
give they provide you a face during faceless correspondence. You know,
(05:34):
you can't you can't see my facial expressions when I'm
emailing you or texting you. Unfortunately, we don't have video
phones yet. Well, I guess we have had some like
poorly conceived ones, but they're not widespread by any means.
They're out there, Yeah, they're out there, but I mean
it's not like you know, um to Android's dream of
electric sheep, you know, and they're all calling on the
video phones. Yeah, I mean, it's not quite dick Tracy yet.
(05:55):
But but but indeed, yeah, it's not a standard part
of our Most people do skype quite a bit though. Yeah. Yeah,
so emoticons are pretty handy, but they really don't compare
when it comes to the human face and what it
can convey. Um, I mean think about it. Now, what
do you I'm trying to look at you and I
can't really see your mouth, Robert, are you smiling or
frowning or scowling? What would you describe your facial expression
(06:16):
right now? Now, now there's a smile because you think
I'm being stupid. But but yeah, like the very basics,
the smiles, the frowns of scows. You can look at
somebody and you instantly have a good idea of what
they're there. You know, their whole attitude is um. Right.
So for example, a person who's trying to gain your
trust may smile um. Someone trying to scare you will
(06:36):
scowl um. And we use these faces, you know, not
just to win trust, but you know also influence and hey,
manipulate others. Yeah, I mean, a nice smile will get
you pretty far, as they say, you say, I don't
know if they say it, but everybody knows it. You know.
It's like, you know, you get pulled over by the police,
what are you gonna do. You're probably gonna put on
a smile or maybe you're going to frown. You're really sad,
(07:00):
you know, cry, Yeah, you could bust out the tears. Yeah,
emotional manipulation goes a long way, and it's you can
probably do a lot more. I mean, there's no problem
about it. You can do a lot more in person
than you can do with an emoticon. Right. So, according
to researcher Paul ekman Um, he found that humans share
at least seven primary facial expressions with identical meetings. Um. So,
(07:20):
first time we have happiness, and you know, while you're
listening to this, think about happiness. What are you doing?
Are you raising, you know, the corners of your lips?
Are you wrinkling your cheeks a little bit, narrowing your eyelids?
Are you producing those lovely crow's feet, those wrinkles in
the corners of your eyes? And then of course we
move on to sadness. What is that feature? I mean,
(07:41):
I think we all know it's sadness. Features snarrowed eyes,
eyebrows brought together, downturn, now pulling up a bunch of
the chin, all that good stuff. And there's fear, uh
and the yeah, wide eyes And apparently a fear is
very similar to surprise. Yes, I believe that. And it
also has a good flaring of the nostrils involved in fear,
(08:02):
which I never noticed before so much I noticed in cartoons,
not really in people. Anger. It's generally a lot of
eyebrow emotion. Yeah, And there's disgusted, um, you know, no scrunching, right,
you know, anytime you see somebody smelling something bad, raising
of the upper lip, downcast eyebrows, narrowed eyes, um, surprised
like we mentioned, and then contempt contempt of course, and
(08:25):
that's notable for raising one side of the mouth into
a sneer or a smirk. Yeah, and a lot of these,
I mean it's things that we pick up from other people,
like in a very early stage we we we don't consciously,
well most of us, unless you like a what a
sociopath or something, you know, you're not consciously using all
of these facial expressions. They just come out. They it's
an expression of what you're feeling inside, right. So, and
(08:48):
then sometimes we have these things called micro expressions. Um.
And I think Chuck in Josh did a good podcast
on micro expressions and there's also an excellent article on
the side if you guys want to check it out.
And these are super interesting. These these are these just
very fleeting expressions that you know occur across your face, uh,
that you really can't control. And there are a lot
of times they're like real tells of what you're feeling,
(09:10):
you know, like you're maybe you're faking that smile or
that frowned for the police officer. But if the police
officer was able to tell be able to read your
micro expressions, then he might be he would be able
to tell like, oh, well, you're lying about something, or
you're really nervous about something that's in the trunk. You know,
well maybe not. There's not a specific micro expression for oh,
(09:31):
my goodness, there's something there's a body in the trunk.
But you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know
if you heard it. But back when the whole baseball
scandal was erupting with Rodriguez and McGuire and some of
those folks, there was a there's a guy who analyzed
Alex Rodriguez uh an interview in which he was asked
about whether he took some of these substances. And the
(09:51):
psychologist or or researcher involved in it analyzed Rodriguez's face
for micro expressions, and you know, he would stop it. Oh,
you know, point to that, look what he's doing there. Yeah,
there's something with the brow as I remember correctly, Um,
if I remember correctly, as is supposed to be like
a real telling micro expression of lying. Yeah. So there
are three thousand of these different expressions according to uh
(10:13):
Paul Ekman. Yeah, and he's really like the godfather of
micro express mr micro expression. And these things can be
pretty brief too, like they're only they may flash across
your face for a second, all right, I mean they
occur so fast that they're not even perceived by the
conscious mind, uh, by either the person expressing them or
the person observing them. And as few as ten percent
(10:37):
of the people, yeah, are even aware of seeing micro
expressions when tested. So it's it's really like below the
surface of conscious perception, you know. Yeah. So we have
all these handy expressions and micro expressions as the case,
maybe to convey how we're feeling about the world, But
what what about instances when when we can't when we
can't emote. Yeah, I mean that's again it comes back
(11:00):
to the emoticons that we throw out during emails. Most
of the time, that our emails are not really life
or death, you know. I means sometimes they are, but
but for the most part, you know, it's critical deadline. Yeah,
it's critical deadline. Or it's like you forgot to pick
something up at the grocery, that kind of thing. Um,
But there is a situation where it is very often
life and death or there's a huge potential for the
(11:21):
situation be life and death. And that is when you
get behind the wheel of an automobile. Right. So driving
is a communal activity. I mean, we tend to think
of driving as an individual experience because a lot of
us are just hopping in the cars and you know,
driving off to work. Yeah, you're sealed in there with
your music or what have you, and you're listening to
his stuff from the Science Lab podcast and really just
you're into it. But you know, you have other drivers
(11:44):
on the road, of course, and you can't really easily
communicate with other folks, you know, next to you. You
can't say, hey, I just cut you off and I'm
really sorry about that, or you can't say, hey, you
just cut me off and what the heck was that? Yeah,
there's um uh, there's a there's a guy by name
of Dr Leon James, who we're talking about Mr Face earlier.
(12:07):
This guy is also sometimes called Doctor Traffic and he
Dr Traffic, Jonathan Strickland wrote an article about road rage,
and it was just kind of funny when you consider
that Strickland doesn't drive, so he wrote the article on
road race. But I mean, I don't collide Adams or
anything our particles, you know, so and I wrote about
that is a good point. That is a good point. Yeah. Yeah,
(12:27):
we're great writers here, but we don't have to actually
do the things we write about. But but anyway, in
the in the article, um Dr James points out several
um aspects of driving that contribute to rate rising, frustration
and stress levels that often boil over into royal into
not roid rage, but road rage um. And these include immobility, constriction,
(12:49):
lack of controlled Um, we get very territorial. Uh, there's
denial and loss of objectivity that means we tend to
overlook our own faults and place the blame on others. Uh. Unpredictability.
Like a lot of this is when you're I think
in life in general, we create like a story around
ourselves where we're the center and everything else is just
you know, gunk, you know, ecocentrics. Yeah, and you get
(13:13):
in the car and it's the same deal. It's like
it's all about like, like, how did that that guy
was out to cut me off? Yeah, you cut me off?
Why is this light not cooperating with me? Come on bus?
You know it's like that's that's that's how we get.
But then another interesting um, the fact that James points
out is ambiguity. Um, there's no culturally agreed upon way
(13:33):
to signal an apology to another driver. I mean, there's
the whole like thanks, you know, for letting me out
while I was trying to take a you know, a
right or left. But but beyond that, it's easy to
misinterpret someone's actions as a sign of aggression or insult. Okay,
let's pause for a second, because I think that there
are a couple of ways out there that people do
communicate and okay, let's hear him. Okay, So first we
(13:55):
have the wave like you were just talking about, and
the wave is hey, thanks you just let me in.
And I've apreciate that. I look for the wave after
I let somebody in, because you expect the way because
you're gonna be mad if they don't. Right, You're like,
do do you get do you get? Like? Like I
just like, yeah, buddy, I'm gonna be late and you
didn't even wave to me. No, no, I would never
do that. And then you, of course there's a horn.
(14:16):
But as you're pointing out earlier when we're talking about
this podcast, um, you know a lot of polaces have
cracked down on using your horn. You can't blare it.
People don't really like all that noise pollution. Um, but yeah,
sure you can. You can use the horn. There's the
light tap. If say you're sitting at a light and
the person in front of you hasn't gone, you kind
of give the light tap. But but I have to
admit I think I've been in situations where the person
(14:38):
has honked back at me after I honked for them. Well,
it depends on the honked And I also i've done that,
like I've honked back at somebody. Why I don't know,
because when we're behind the wheel, we're different creatures, you know,
and we're like more prone to anger. And I'm there
was like one I forget what I was doing. Maybe
I was tweeting or something. I don't know, but it's
a legal Robbert, Well now it is. But this is
(14:59):
a different um. Back in the days when you could
months ago, well I know I was at it stopped,
you know, I mean, yeah, I was at a light
and suddenly it turned green and I didn't know that,
you know, did it turned. The dude behind me gave
me a little hog and this like like anger rose
and I'm like, what are you honking at me for?
And then I honked back and then I was like, wait,
the guy would totally correct to honk at me. Um,
(15:20):
I would like I would like to also put a
signal out there, UM, the hold up the hands to
acknowledge fault or blame. Sometimes I will do this if
I have you know, if I've done something like oh shoot,
I should not have done that, so you know, I
hold up my hands. Yeah. Well I used I used
to be more um yeah, expressive in my irritation to
other drivers, but I I finally have just settled on
(15:42):
just shaking my head from side to side and like disappointment.
And it works two ways. A it's very subtle, and
it allows me to to let some of the you know,
the anger out in a very calm manner. And also
other drivers aren't going to see it and attack me.
Because once I had that happened, I was I was
on the way to like a job interview, and we
(16:03):
were it was like raining, and we're like stuck in traffic, right,
and there's like some like annoying trucker behind me. Why
would you mess with the trucker. I wasn't messing with
the trucker. It was just kind of like like he
was like really writing my tail. Like no, it was
the heat, I know, because he got so irritated, and
I think I like throw my hands up or something,
you know, uh, you know, but I mean I'm in
(16:24):
the car in front of him, right, and then he
like loses it, gets out of his vehicle and like
walks up beside my car and and like it it's
like like you know, just jetting wildly, like he wants
me to get out and like fight him in traffic
or something. But the weird thing was it's like I
I look up at him right and make eye contact
with him, and I imagine the look on my face
was kind of like what what's going on? There's like,
(16:47):
you know, I'm just kind of completely shocked. So he
like he makes eye contact with me, and it's like
he instantly like calms down and goes back to his car.
And it's this is not like a Jedi mind trick
thing with me. Either. It's like he made eye contact
with me, he saw my face, you know, and and
then everything was human again. Okay, that's really interesting you
say that because I'm sorry, guys, we are talking a
little bit about road rage, but you are welcome to
(17:08):
share your road rage stories with us, and now I
want to share one of my own. Um, similar thing happened.
I was driving home. I used to have a long
commute from from a different job, and there's a particular
intersection and a gentleman just kind of you know, all
of a sudden crossed in front of me. It was
really tight, and um, I gave him a long loud horn.
I should not have done that. I do not suggest
(17:30):
that I'm not proud of myself for giving the long
loud horn, but I did. And he stopped the car,
and he got out of his Mercedes convertible and he
came toward me in my little eccount of box, and
I rolled up the window and unlocked the doors and
just stared straight ahead. There was no eye contact. I
would not look at him because I was afraid of
provoking him with eye contact. So that's interesting that you
(17:51):
said it, I wouldn't look at him, but yours kind
of abated based on that. Well, I have seen some
reports to some studies that to to talk about like
icon tach Um not doing any good after a certain
point if everybody is still angry, because it's because then
you know, it's like you have angry drivers, and then
if they're like only the only it's like that you
just compound, you compound what they're feeling, and you confirm
(18:13):
any kind of negative feelings if you like make finally
make eye contact with the other person and they're like
scowling at you, because then it's just like you know,
you're thinking, oh, these drivers are monsters. You know what's
with Atlanta's drivers? Then you make eye contact with them
and you're like, look, I was totally right. Look how
angry they are? Right right? Okay, So all of these
road rage stories, what are you gonna do? What's the
driver to do? How are you going to emote? Clearly
(18:34):
to throw up the hands has multiple meanings. People aren't
always so psyched about the light tap on the horn,
and not everybody can drive a convertible, right, So there
have been some efforts to bridges communication gap among drivers. Um,
let's talk about one called the Vehicle Signaling System. Yeah.
This was like a patent I believe, Yeah, and I
was by some guys named Jerry E. Beasley and E.
(18:57):
Scott Geller. And this particular to allow drivers to display
a message like sorry to other drivers. According to the
patent quote, the messages associated with the use of the
communication system are selected for enhancement of safety and to
avert the negative responses associated with read rich cool sounds
like a good thing. Don't think it ever quite took off.
(19:17):
Between like two thousand one and two thousand five, Japanese
engineers working with Toyota took a shot at it. Along
similar lines. They had this project called the pod and
and it's really I mean, it really sounds overly ambitious,
but it's but which is probably one of the reasons
you don't see these this technology out on the roads today.
But they basically said, let's make a car where that
(19:39):
you have sensors that will read, um, the emotions of
the driver and convey them through the car like the
car would emote, which instantly brings to mind like images
of like Thomas the tank engine or something you know.
But and it's not completely unlike that. Uh. It would
feature like headlights that would fade for bright too dole
(20:01):
to indicate anger or contentment. Eyebrows formed by lighted slits
along the car's bonnet that would be able to illuminate
to form a frown. So you would have a vehicle
that that's frowning on you. Are you picturing? Am I
the only one picturing Herbie? Did Herbie have a face?
I don't know. Herbie kind of has a face. Her
(20:22):
being in a little VW Bug in the movies, I
felt like you could emote. Maybe you just had more
of a connection with that film than I did. But
but yeah, it's basically the you know, the vehicle would
um would would emote for the the the driver. And
at the time I think they were they were saying
that the technology was still like ten or fifteen years
(20:44):
off or more, um, you know, before we would actually
be able to see this. Uh, And of course we
haven't seen it. So my complaint with that would be,
I would I like to selectively emote? Yeah, I don't
like to emote every feeling or thought or sweaty palm
that I'm feeling. Right well, yeah, And it's like if
you're driving, if you're angry and you're driving like you
don't want to again, you it seems unhealthy for everybody
(21:08):
on the road to know that you're an angry driver.
And it seems like when you if you, if you
were to, you know, to roll out this technology, you know,
say give it to everybody in Atlanta. I think you'd
have like two types of drivers. You'd have like angry
drivers and then the drivers that are jamming out listening
to music. You know, so because I and I actually
I saw another study that pointed out that like we're
(21:29):
kind of like reard at this point to drive angry
and have road rage. You know, we what do you
mean because we have all this stuff to entertain us
in the car or you know what we're it's like
all the reasons we're talking about before about being shut off.
But also like a lot of us grow up with
with parents that are that are like, you know, your
mom's driving the car, and she's probably talking about the traffic,
(21:50):
you know, and complaining about the traffic and creating that
little story in which her and her driving experience are
the center of everything. Like a lot of people do.
The the whole chatter while they're driving. I mean, have
you ever been in a vehicle driving nobody else in
the vehicle with you and you're you're talking, like you're
commenting on the on the traffic a little bit. Okay,
well do you talk to yourself in the car? Are
(22:11):
you trying to get I didn't think about it, muntil
I I saw it mentioned in one of these these studies,
and they were like saying that people, that's one of
the signs so that the driver, most drivers seemed to
um to put out there. So they they chatter and
they're like they're like, oh, what are you doing, buddy?
You know you kind of talk to the other cars.
You know, what are you doing? Guy? You totally cut
me off there. It's like, oh, I guess you're not
(22:32):
gonna make that like great, we all missed the lot,
you know, things like that, um which occasionally, like if
you've ever like done like me, I think it was
like a month ago my phone I pocket called my sister. Well,
if I guess, if you put your phone in your
back pockets, a butt call more like a hip call
for me, I guess. But but yeah, so I called
her and I was just driving, so she got to
(22:53):
listen to my my traffic chatter for like the length
of the message. You know, so so, and there isn't
a new gadget called the drive Motion and why don't
you take us to this one because you're a little
bit more familiar with Yeah, and this is It took
me a want to figure out how to pronounce the
name of the product, because it's drive Emotion, but with
(23:14):
one word. And instead of instead of doing the double ease,
they share any So it's d R I V E
M O c I O n UM. And this you're
talking about, you want to selectively emote when you're driving,
and you don't want certainly you don't want like a
supercomputer picking up on all your micro expressions and like
letting everybody know that you're pretending to be happy but
you're really frightened of the world. You know, that would
(23:35):
be that would suck. But now this is basically a
device that like sticks on the back of your your
back windshield, you know, um, and it lights up and
it has like five different things that can do. It
can make a happy face, It can make a winky
face or I don't know what you'd call it a face,
a smiley face, that's winking. Um, is that maybe if
(23:58):
you find the driver next to kind of cute I guess, yeah,
or that was kind of a cheeky move, Yeah, some
sort of traffic flirting or something. I don't know. And
then there's like the words back off, the words thanks,
and the word sorry. So you know, very limited in
what you can convey, but you have to wonder. It's
like maybe this is enough to sort of make some difference,
(24:20):
you know, to bring some humanity back into onto the roads. Right,
So as long as we have instances of road rage
and people you know, doing kind of terrible things to
each other in traffic, maybe these emoticons in the car
aren't such a bad thing. Yeah, maybe they should be standard.
Really yeah, I mean if you look at Dr Leon James,
he was saying that fifty six percent of the men
(24:42):
surveyed said the experience rage on a daily basis vers
of the women. So either sex a lot of rage
going on, and and rage has been I mean, not
not necessarily rage, but like anger is one of the
is frequently um um connected to traffic accidents and just
general lack of stay down the roads. So right, so
(25:02):
we'd love to hear from you, And what we would
love to hear on this is do you guys have
any sort of signs that you give to other drivers
and and we don't want to hear no, make them
all nice and g rated. Thank you very much. Um,
you know do you have Yeah, because all the obscene
ones are pretty obvious. There's only so many variations that
you can not roll with on that. But how do
you convey other emotions? Yeah? And how do you feel
(25:25):
about emoticon Send us an email at science stuff at
has stuff works dot com or connected with us on
Facebook or stuff from the Science Lab or on Twitter
or lab stuff Yeah, Wolf actually, or at least I
will use emoticons on lap stuff and are in our
Facebook account, Allison never That's all they got. Thanks for listening.
(25:53):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check at our blogs on the House of works dot
com homepage.
Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to stuff from
the Science Lab. This is Alison madam Out, the science
editor at how stuff works dot com. And this is
Robert Lambs, science writer at how stuff works dot com.
(00:23):
And you know we um we communicate a lot at work,
uh via email? We do. Yeah, even though we're just,
I don't know, a few yards away from each other.
We do. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they have the habit of
um popping over your cube wall and annoying you, but
only from the right side. Well, you know, so much
as annoying me as just shocked me because I always
have my headphones in and so yes, you do so
(00:45):
jamming out in your cube writing. I have a hard
time figuring out how you jam out and right at
the same time, I don't know how I would write
if I didn't jam out. It's the only way to
do it. Listening to music with words doesn't that to
strack to you know, I can't listen used to when
I had a more brainless job and I was doing
and like pagination for a newspaper, that I could listen
to the whole podcasts and you know, where their discussions
and stuff and and you know, and and I can
(01:08):
do my job, but like here, as long as it's
not somebody giving me a lecture, you know. Yeah, most
of the lyrics to the things I listened to aren't
really that deep anyway. So sometimes we do communicate by email,
and uh, you you're you throw in an emoticon sometimes
in there. Yeah, I'll throw it in emoticon just too.
It's kind of like real writing, in my opinion, shouldn't
(01:29):
have a lot of exclamation points a streamer. Yeah, but
sometimes you're doing a short email, you know, it's like
an exclamation point can make all the difference in in
the enthusiasm level, you know. Uh. And likewise, if you're
not too sure about about how your you know, words
are going to be received by the recent recipient, uh,
you know, you throw on a little smiley face or
(01:51):
I don't really use said faces in in work emails,
but but sometimes there's a little like annoyed one, you know,
where you do like the you know, the two eyes
and then kind of like a sideways kind of um,
you know mouth. But I'm never really sure when to
throw it in a moticon, to be honest, have I
ever sent one used on an email to you. Yeah,
like you were saying earlier, you just you rarely emote anyway,
(02:14):
basically a robot. But you know it's like as a writer,
I feel like I can generally say exactly what I
want to say. The email is a tricky method of communication. Yeah,
sometimes you gotta shoot him off fast. You don't have
a lot of time. And it's the same with like text.
You know, you know you you just you know you.
You want to convey the message quickly and non starting
an argument, so you just be like, you know, you're
(02:35):
just throwing a smiling So tell us a little about
the history of the emoticon. No, this is this is
actually pretty interesting. It is. Yeah, we can pinpoint the
exact moment when emoticon sprang into existence, and that was
even four am on September nine, And that was thanks
to you, gentlemen, and Professor Scotty Falman Carnegie Mellon. And
(02:58):
he was suggesting their use. He was talking about the
limits of online humor and how you know to really
get across comments that are meant to be taken lately
and said, so he said, and I quote, I proposed
the following character sequence for joke markers. Um, you can't see,
so I will tell you. It's the the smiley face,
the colon dash parenthesy and read it sideways. So let
(03:23):
me read that to you. Aain. I proposed the following
character sequence for joke markers, and he gave an emoticon
and then he said, read it sideways. Yeah. Now he
included the knows I rarely include the notes. Yeah, yeah,
so I used a simplified version. But this was this
was early in the emoticon creation process, and it's really
really skyrocketed since then. As I think everybody knows, there's
just and there's a huge array of emoticons you can
(03:46):
whip out in uh in your daily email correspondences aside
from just smiley frownie brownie. I like how they all
get the e. Yeah, there's there's a vampire one where
blood suck your Yeah. I don't know when you would
use that. And there are different ones in Japan too, right, yeah,
I mean especially when you have a different well, actually
(04:07):
I saw a chart where it's like in the Japanese
emoticons have a tendency to they tend to want to
make there's more um horizontal instead of vertical. And and
then also when you get into other languages, you have
more characters and you can really create crazy emoticons that
like look like ogre faces and and cats and well
cats and the cat one you can actually do uh
with just it's like an equal sign and then ah,
(04:29):
what's the carrot? Yeah, like a carrot and then a
dot and then a carrot, then an equal sign. What
wila you have? Like a have you used that one before?
Are you pretty psyched to use it? Yeah? I don't
know when I'm gonna, you know, unless I just start,
like if after text my wife would be like, did
you feed the blank? And then I've thrown the mooticon
for the cat. But that's longer than typing out you know,
texting cat. Yeah, but we do that all the time.
(04:50):
It's like around here, Um, you know, when people ride
how stuff works, at least in the office, they'll put
HSW because it's shorter on paper. But then you hear
people saying, yeah, we really need to think about hs
W and then you're like, that's not shorter. You didn't
save any syllables and saying hs DEB instead of how
stuff works. That's true. People should just be rational. Um. So, yeah,
(05:11):
like we were saying, emoticons are awfully handy when you
don't have the ability to convey your tone or your feeling.
And yeah, they help out when our voices can't do
the same. And uh and and I think one of
the even more important things, and what we're really going
to talk about in this podcast, um, is that they
give they provide you a face during faceless correspondence. You know,
(05:34):
you can't you can't see my facial expressions when I'm
emailing you or texting you. Unfortunately, we don't have video
phones yet. Well, I guess we have had some like
poorly conceived ones, but they're not widespread by any means.
They're out there, Yeah, they're out there, but I mean
it's not like you know, um to Android's dream of
electric sheep, you know, and they're all calling on the
video phones. Yeah, I mean, it's not quite dick Tracy yet.
(05:55):
But but but indeed, yeah, it's not a standard part
of our Most people do skype quite a bit though. Yeah. Yeah,
so emoticons are pretty handy, but they really don't compare
when it comes to the human face and what it
can convey. Um, I mean think about it. Now, what
do you I'm trying to look at you and I
can't really see your mouth, Robert, are you smiling or
frowning or scowling? What would you describe your facial expression
(06:16):
right now? Now, now there's a smile because you think
I'm being stupid. But but yeah, like the very basics,
the smiles, the frowns of scows. You can look at
somebody and you instantly have a good idea of what
they're there. You know, their whole attitude is um. Right.
So for example, a person who's trying to gain your
trust may smile um. Someone trying to scare you will
(06:36):
scowl um. And we use these faces, you know, not
just to win trust, but you know also influence and hey,
manipulate others. Yeah, I mean, a nice smile will get
you pretty far, as they say, you say, I don't
know if they say it, but everybody knows it. You know.
It's like, you know, you get pulled over by the police,
what are you gonna do. You're probably gonna put on
a smile or maybe you're going to frown. You're really sad,
(07:00):
you know, cry, Yeah, you could bust out the tears. Yeah,
emotional manipulation goes a long way, and it's you can
probably do a lot more. I mean, there's no problem
about it. You can do a lot more in person
than you can do with an emoticon. Right. So, according
to researcher Paul ekman Um, he found that humans share
at least seven primary facial expressions with identical meetings. Um. So,
(07:20):
first time we have happiness, and you know, while you're
listening to this, think about happiness. What are you doing?
Are you raising, you know, the corners of your lips?
Are you wrinkling your cheeks a little bit, narrowing your eyelids?
Are you producing those lovely crow's feet, those wrinkles in
the corners of your eyes? And then of course we
move on to sadness. What is that feature? I mean,
(07:41):
I think we all know it's sadness. Features snarrowed eyes,
eyebrows brought together, downturn, now pulling up a bunch of
the chin, all that good stuff. And there's fear, uh
and the yeah, wide eyes And apparently a fear is
very similar to surprise. Yes, I believe that. And it
also has a good flaring of the nostrils involved in fear,
(08:02):
which I never noticed before so much I noticed in cartoons,
not really in people. Anger. It's generally a lot of
eyebrow emotion. Yeah, And there's disgusted, um, you know, no scrunching, right,
you know, anytime you see somebody smelling something bad, raising
of the upper lip, downcast eyebrows, narrowed eyes, um, surprised
like we mentioned, and then contempt contempt of course, and
(08:25):
that's notable for raising one side of the mouth into
a sneer or a smirk. Yeah, and a lot of these,
I mean it's things that we pick up from other people,
like in a very early stage we we we don't consciously,
well most of us, unless you like a what a
sociopath or something, you know, you're not consciously using all
of these facial expressions. They just come out. They it's
an expression of what you're feeling inside, right. So, and
(08:48):
then sometimes we have these things called micro expressions. Um.
And I think Chuck in Josh did a good podcast
on micro expressions and there's also an excellent article on
the side if you guys want to check it out.
And these are super interesting. These these are these just
very fleeting expressions that you know occur across your face, uh,
that you really can't control. And there are a lot
of times they're like real tells of what you're feeling,
(09:10):
you know, like you're maybe you're faking that smile or
that frowned for the police officer. But if the police
officer was able to tell be able to read your
micro expressions, then he might be he would be able
to tell like, oh, well, you're lying about something, or
you're really nervous about something that's in the trunk. You know,
well maybe not. There's not a specific micro expression for oh,
(09:31):
my goodness, there's something there's a body in the trunk.
But you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know
if you heard it. But back when the whole baseball
scandal was erupting with Rodriguez and McGuire and some of
those folks, there was a there's a guy who analyzed
Alex Rodriguez uh an interview in which he was asked
about whether he took some of these substances. And the
(09:51):
psychologist or or researcher involved in it analyzed Rodriguez's face
for micro expressions, and you know, he would stop it. Oh,
you know, point to that, look what he's doing there. Yeah,
there's something with the brow as I remember correctly, Um,
if I remember correctly, as is supposed to be like
a real telling micro expression of lying. Yeah. So there
are three thousand of these different expressions according to uh
(10:13):
Paul Ekman. Yeah, and he's really like the godfather of
micro express mr micro expression. And these things can be
pretty brief too, like they're only they may flash across
your face for a second, all right, I mean they
occur so fast that they're not even perceived by the
conscious mind, uh, by either the person expressing them or
the person observing them. And as few as ten percent
(10:37):
of the people, yeah, are even aware of seeing micro
expressions when tested. So it's it's really like below the
surface of conscious perception, you know. Yeah. So we have
all these handy expressions and micro expressions as the case,
maybe to convey how we're feeling about the world, But
what what about instances when when we can't when we
can't emote. Yeah, I mean that's again it comes back
(11:00):
to the emoticons that we throw out during emails. Most
of the time, that our emails are not really life
or death, you know. I means sometimes they are, but
but for the most part, you know, it's critical deadline. Yeah,
it's critical deadline. Or it's like you forgot to pick
something up at the grocery, that kind of thing. Um,
But there is a situation where it is very often
life and death or there's a huge potential for the
(11:21):
situation be life and death. And that is when you
get behind the wheel of an automobile. Right. So driving
is a communal activity. I mean, we tend to think
of driving as an individual experience because a lot of
us are just hopping in the cars and you know,
driving off to work. Yeah, you're sealed in there with
your music or what have you, and you're listening to
his stuff from the Science Lab podcast and really just
you're into it. But you know, you have other drivers
(11:44):
on the road, of course, and you can't really easily
communicate with other folks, you know, next to you. You
can't say, hey, I just cut you off and I'm
really sorry about that, or you can't say, hey, you
just cut me off and what the heck was that? Yeah,
there's um uh, there's a there's a guy by name
of Dr Leon James, who we're talking about Mr Face earlier.
(12:07):
This guy is also sometimes called Doctor Traffic and he
Dr Traffic, Jonathan Strickland wrote an article about road rage,
and it was just kind of funny when you consider
that Strickland doesn't drive, so he wrote the article on
road race. But I mean, I don't collide Adams or
anything our particles, you know, so and I wrote about
that is a good point. That is a good point. Yeah. Yeah,
(12:27):
we're great writers here, but we don't have to actually
do the things we write about. But but anyway, in
the in the article, um Dr James points out several
um aspects of driving that contribute to rate rising, frustration
and stress levels that often boil over into royal into
not roid rage, but road rage um. And these include immobility, constriction,
(12:49):
lack of controlled Um, we get very territorial. Uh, there's
denial and loss of objectivity that means we tend to
overlook our own faults and place the blame on others. Uh. Unpredictability.
Like a lot of this is when you're I think
in life in general, we create like a story around
ourselves where we're the center and everything else is just
you know, gunk, you know, ecocentrics. Yeah, and you get
(13:13):
in the car and it's the same deal. It's like
it's all about like, like, how did that that guy
was out to cut me off? Yeah, you cut me off?
Why is this light not cooperating with me? Come on bus?
You know it's like that's that's that's how we get.
But then another interesting um, the fact that James points
out is ambiguity. Um, there's no culturally agreed upon way
(13:33):
to signal an apology to another driver. I mean, there's
the whole like thanks, you know, for letting me out
while I was trying to take a you know, a
right or left. But but beyond that, it's easy to
misinterpret someone's actions as a sign of aggression or insult. Okay,
let's pause for a second, because I think that there
are a couple of ways out there that people do
communicate and okay, let's hear him. Okay, So first we
(13:55):
have the wave like you were just talking about, and
the wave is hey, thanks you just let me in.
And I've apreciate that. I look for the wave after
I let somebody in, because you expect the way because
you're gonna be mad if they don't. Right, You're like,
do do you get do you get? Like? Like I
just like, yeah, buddy, I'm gonna be late and you
didn't even wave to me. No, no, I would never
do that. And then you, of course there's a horn.
(14:16):
But as you're pointing out earlier when we're talking about
this podcast, um, you know a lot of polaces have
cracked down on using your horn. You can't blare it.
People don't really like all that noise pollution. Um, but yeah,
sure you can. You can use the horn. There's the
light tap. If say you're sitting at a light and
the person in front of you hasn't gone, you kind
of give the light tap. But but I have to
admit I think I've been in situations where the person
(14:38):
has honked back at me after I honked for them. Well,
it depends on the honked And I also i've done that,
like I've honked back at somebody. Why I don't know,
because when we're behind the wheel, we're different creatures, you know,
and we're like more prone to anger. And I'm there
was like one I forget what I was doing. Maybe
I was tweeting or something. I don't know, but it's
a legal Robbert, Well now it is. But this is
(14:59):
a different um. Back in the days when you could
months ago, well I know I was at it stopped,
you know, I mean, yeah, I was at a light
and suddenly it turned green and I didn't know that,
you know, did it turned. The dude behind me gave
me a little hog and this like like anger rose
and I'm like, what are you honking at me for?
And then I honked back and then I was like, wait,
the guy would totally correct to honk at me. Um,
(15:20):
I would like I would like to also put a
signal out there, UM, the hold up the hands to
acknowledge fault or blame. Sometimes I will do this if
I have you know, if I've done something like oh shoot,
I should not have done that, so you know, I
hold up my hands. Yeah. Well I used I used
to be more um yeah, expressive in my irritation to
other drivers, but I I finally have just settled on
(15:42):
just shaking my head from side to side and like disappointment.
And it works two ways. A it's very subtle, and
it allows me to to let some of the you know,
the anger out in a very calm manner. And also
other drivers aren't going to see it and attack me.
Because once I had that happened, I was I was
on the way to like a job interview, and we
(16:03):
were it was like raining, and we're like stuck in traffic, right,
and there's like some like annoying trucker behind me. Why
would you mess with the trucker. I wasn't messing with
the trucker. It was just kind of like like he
was like really writing my tail. Like no, it was
the heat, I know, because he got so irritated, and
I think I like throw my hands up or something,
you know, uh, you know, but I mean I'm in
(16:24):
the car in front of him, right, and then he
like loses it, gets out of his vehicle and like
walks up beside my car and and like it it's
like like you know, just jetting wildly, like he wants
me to get out and like fight him in traffic
or something. But the weird thing was it's like I
I look up at him right and make eye contact
with him, and I imagine the look on my face
was kind of like what what's going on? There's like,
(16:47):
you know, I'm just kind of completely shocked. So he
like he makes eye contact with me, and it's like
he instantly like calms down and goes back to his car.
And it's this is not like a Jedi mind trick
thing with me. Either. It's like he made eye contact
with me, he saw my face, you know, and and
then everything was human again. Okay, that's really interesting you
say that because I'm sorry, guys, we are talking a
little bit about road rage, but you are welcome to
(17:08):
share your road rage stories with us, and now I
want to share one of my own. Um, similar thing happened.
I was driving home. I used to have a long
commute from from a different job, and there's a particular
intersection and a gentleman just kind of you know, all
of a sudden crossed in front of me. It was
really tight, and um, I gave him a long loud horn.
I should not have done that. I do not suggest
(17:30):
that I'm not proud of myself for giving the long
loud horn, but I did. And he stopped the car,
and he got out of his Mercedes convertible and he
came toward me in my little eccount of box, and
I rolled up the window and unlocked the doors and
just stared straight ahead. There was no eye contact. I
would not look at him because I was afraid of
provoking him with eye contact. So that's interesting that you
(17:51):
said it, I wouldn't look at him, but yours kind
of abated based on that. Well, I have seen some
reports to some studies that to to talk about like
icon tach Um not doing any good after a certain
point if everybody is still angry, because it's because then
you know, it's like you have angry drivers, and then
if they're like only the only it's like that you
just compound, you compound what they're feeling, and you confirm
(18:13):
any kind of negative feelings if you like make finally
make eye contact with the other person and they're like
scowling at you, because then it's just like you know,
you're thinking, oh, these drivers are monsters. You know what's
with Atlanta's drivers? Then you make eye contact with them
and you're like, look, I was totally right. Look how
angry they are? Right right? Okay, So all of these
road rage stories, what are you gonna do? What's the
driver to do? How are you going to emote? Clearly
(18:34):
to throw up the hands has multiple meanings. People aren't
always so psyched about the light tap on the horn,
and not everybody can drive a convertible, right, So there
have been some efforts to bridges communication gap among drivers. Um,
let's talk about one called the Vehicle Signaling System. Yeah.
This was like a patent I believe, Yeah, and I
was by some guys named Jerry E. Beasley and E.
(18:57):
Scott Geller. And this particular to allow drivers to display
a message like sorry to other drivers. According to the
patent quote, the messages associated with the use of the
communication system are selected for enhancement of safety and to
avert the negative responses associated with read rich cool sounds
like a good thing. Don't think it ever quite took off.
(19:17):
Between like two thousand one and two thousand five, Japanese
engineers working with Toyota took a shot at it. Along
similar lines. They had this project called the pod and
and it's really I mean, it really sounds overly ambitious,
but it's but which is probably one of the reasons
you don't see these this technology out on the roads today.
But they basically said, let's make a car where that
(19:39):
you have sensors that will read, um, the emotions of
the driver and convey them through the car like the
car would emote, which instantly brings to mind like images
of like Thomas the tank engine or something you know.
But and it's not completely unlike that. Uh. It would
feature like headlights that would fade for bright too dole
(20:01):
to indicate anger or contentment. Eyebrows formed by lighted slits
along the car's bonnet that would be able to illuminate
to form a frown. So you would have a vehicle
that that's frowning on you. Are you picturing? Am I
the only one picturing Herbie? Did Herbie have a face?
I don't know. Herbie kind of has a face. Her
(20:22):
being in a little VW Bug in the movies, I
felt like you could emote. Maybe you just had more
of a connection with that film than I did. But
but yeah, it's basically the you know, the vehicle would
um would would emote for the the the driver. And
at the time I think they were they were saying
that the technology was still like ten or fifteen years
(20:44):
off or more, um, you know, before we would actually
be able to see this. Uh, And of course we
haven't seen it. So my complaint with that would be,
I would I like to selectively emote? Yeah, I don't
like to emote every feeling or thought or sweaty palm
that I'm feeling. Right well, yeah, And it's like if
you're driving, if you're angry and you're driving like you
don't want to again, you it seems unhealthy for everybody
(21:08):
on the road to know that you're an angry driver.
And it seems like when you if you, if you
were to, you know, to roll out this technology, you know,
say give it to everybody in Atlanta. I think you'd
have like two types of drivers. You'd have like angry
drivers and then the drivers that are jamming out listening
to music. You know, so because I and I actually
I saw another study that pointed out that like we're
(21:29):
kind of like reard at this point to drive angry
and have road rage. You know, we what do you
mean because we have all this stuff to entertain us
in the car or you know what we're it's like
all the reasons we're talking about before about being shut off.
But also like a lot of us grow up with
with parents that are that are like, you know, your
mom's driving the car, and she's probably talking about the traffic,
(21:50):
you know, and complaining about the traffic and creating that
little story in which her and her driving experience are
the center of everything. Like a lot of people do.
The the whole chatter while they're driving. I mean, have
you ever been in a vehicle driving nobody else in
the vehicle with you and you're you're talking, like you're
commenting on the on the traffic a little bit. Okay,
well do you talk to yourself in the car? Are
(22:11):
you trying to get I didn't think about it, muntil
I I saw it mentioned in one of these these studies,
and they were like saying that people, that's one of
the signs so that the driver, most drivers seemed to
um to put out there. So they they chatter and
they're like they're like, oh, what are you doing, buddy?
You know you kind of talk to the other cars.
You know, what are you doing? Guy? You totally cut
me off there. It's like, oh, I guess you're not
(22:32):
gonna make that like great, we all missed the lot,
you know, things like that, um which occasionally, like if
you've ever like done like me, I think it was
like a month ago my phone I pocket called my sister. Well,
if I guess, if you put your phone in your
back pockets, a butt call more like a hip call
for me, I guess. But but yeah, so I called
her and I was just driving, so she got to
(22:53):
listen to my my traffic chatter for like the length
of the message. You know, so so, and there isn't
a new gadget called the drive Motion and why don't
you take us to this one because you're a little
bit more familiar with Yeah, and this is It took
me a want to figure out how to pronounce the
name of the product, because it's drive Emotion, but with
(23:14):
one word. And instead of instead of doing the double ease,
they share any So it's d R I V E
M O c I O n UM. And this you're
talking about, you want to selectively emote when you're driving,
and you don't want certainly you don't want like a
supercomputer picking up on all your micro expressions and like
letting everybody know that you're pretending to be happy but
you're really frightened of the world. You know, that would
(23:35):
be that would suck. But now this is basically a
device that like sticks on the back of your your
back windshield, you know, um, and it lights up and
it has like five different things that can do. It
can make a happy face, It can make a winky
face or I don't know what you'd call it a face,
a smiley face, that's winking. Um, is that maybe if
(23:58):
you find the driver next to kind of cute I guess, yeah,
or that was kind of a cheeky move, Yeah, some
sort of traffic flirting or something. I don't know. And
then there's like the words back off, the words thanks,
and the word sorry. So you know, very limited in
what you can convey, but you have to wonder. It's
like maybe this is enough to sort of make some difference,
(24:20):
you know, to bring some humanity back into onto the roads. Right,
So as long as we have instances of road rage
and people you know, doing kind of terrible things to
each other in traffic, maybe these emoticons in the car
aren't such a bad thing. Yeah, maybe they should be standard.
Really yeah, I mean if you look at Dr Leon James,
he was saying that fifty six percent of the men
(24:42):
surveyed said the experience rage on a daily basis vers
of the women. So either sex a lot of rage
going on, and and rage has been I mean, not
not necessarily rage, but like anger is one of the
is frequently um um connected to traffic accidents and just
general lack of stay down the roads. So right, so
(25:02):
we'd love to hear from you, And what we would
love to hear on this is do you guys have
any sort of signs that you give to other drivers
and and we don't want to hear no, make them
all nice and g rated. Thank you very much. Um,
you know do you have Yeah, because all the obscene
ones are pretty obvious. There's only so many variations that
you can not roll with on that. But how do
you convey other emotions? Yeah? And how do you feel
(25:25):
about emoticon Send us an email at science stuff at
has stuff works dot com or connected with us on
Facebook or stuff from the Science Lab or on Twitter
or lab stuff Yeah, Wolf actually, or at least I
will use emoticons on lap stuff and are in our
Facebook account, Allison never That's all they got. Thanks for listening.
(25:53):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check at our blogs on the House of works dot
com homepage.
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