courses :: mas 963   the virtual society :: judith donath   faces and the representation of people leslie zebrowitz: chapters 2 and 3 Zebrowitz diagnoses facial qualities under three separate headings - structural(shape of the head, texture of skin, color of hair), dynamic(muscular movements, gaze direction, pupil dilation) and artificial(hairstyle, glasses, makeup). She describes how these qualities can reveal the "stable attributes of sex, race, and identity; the rapidly changing attribute of emotion; and the more slowly changing attributes of age and physical and mental fitness." In the context of online communication, I think the absence of the face makes some of the negative prejudices and gross overgeneralizations associated with gender, ethnicity and age somewhat less of an issue. Although people will still jump to conclusions by perhaps assuming you are male, or Hispanic or over 18 depending on what you say, the ability to initiate discussion and participate in conversations within groups that might otherwise be relatively impenetrable in the real world, is a definite advantage. Zebrowitz's observations regarding facial cues and emotion serve to highlight some of the disadvantages discerned when the face is absent. She concurs with research demonstrating that "at least seven basic emotions can be accurately communicated by facial expressions: happiness, fear, surprise, anger, sadness, disgust, and contempt." Such expressions can be a powerful validation of what someone says, or alternately, belie what has just been uttered and help expose the speaker as a deceptive imposter. The ability to interpret a conversation using facial and gestural clues is an important part of our everyday interactions with people. In an online environment, particularly in text-only communication, the absence of such cues can make conversation seem sterile, stilted and less exciting. Zebrowitz makes an interesting distinction between static facial qualities and dynamic, movement ones in the context of understanding emotion. People are more readily able to accurately guess the emotion a person is experiencing if they view a moving expression(video clip etc.), rather than a static image(slide). From this we can infer, that although static representations of people on the web(2D graphics, drawings, photographs) can provide some information regarding a person's identity, the ability to display moving imagery would greatly increase understanding on a moment-to-moment basis as a conversation progresses. Zebrowitz also discusses the abstract characterization of expressions in primitive masks, where, for example, diagonal and angular facial qualities communicate anger. The fact that modern observers can still comprehend this meaning provides support for Darwin's thesis that "the basic expressions of emotion are universal to the human species." Following on from this, we can see how using a very simple synthetic model of the face which can be modified to denote angular expressions(unhappy) or indeed, curvilinear ones(happy/content) could supply additional weight to a conversation, albeit in a crude way. People recognize each other by the "entire gestalt or facial configuration" of the face, rather than just by individual features. In a crowded online graphical environment, adding some facial movement to a graphical avatar might facilitate easier recognition(eg - "susan" always wiggles her ears when she is enjoying a conversation), particularly when we consider the similarity between many visual representations in online chat rooms. I found Zebrowitz's descriptions of face reading in Chapter 3 to be a somewhat confusing hodge-podge of superstition and loosely substantiated empirical research. I don't think her insights into appearance-based trait expectations are particularly well founded, although her explanation of overgeneralization effects is relevant to online communication. Common methods of substantiating text-based communication with visual imagery(static or moving) can still be somewhat crude, in that there are a very fixed number of expressions with few degrees of variance in between. The tendency to overgeneralize - for example, assume that "x" is happy/confused/sad because "y" has used expression "b" to mean happy/confused/sad before - is a feature of the real world that is translated to the virtual world also. Vicki Bruce and Andy Young - In the Eye of the Beholder Bruce and Young examine the aspect of attractiveness in respect to how we respond to faces, using genetic, environmental and cultural evidence to support their claims. They describe how we are attracted to those that are like us, such as family and kin, alluding to Dawkin's selfish gene theory. In examining the notion of attractiveness they also take into consideration the huge variations in what is considered beautiful not only between different cultures, but also within those cultures themselves over time. In the section devoted to "messages from the face", Bruce and Young examine how the face is not only instrumental in helping us understand speech, but is also fundamental to our understanding of conversational turn-taking, to determining where someone's attention is directed and to transmitting gestural information such as nodding and frowning which add significance to the speech act. Knowing that someone wishes to speak next or that someone is no longer paying attention to you are important facets of communication that are somewhat lost in conversational environments where the face is absent. Tag names could be highlighted to represent that someone wishes to speak next or in the other situation, perhaps the avatar/tag could move away from the other avatar/tag to denote that they no longer wished to carry on the conversation. The problem is that much of the subtlety is lost. I might wish to briefly look elsewhere whilst talking to you but not necessarily move away, whilst it might be instructive for you to know that although I'm talking to you, I have "wandering eyes". Bruce and Young also discuss gaze within the context of expressing intimacy, which would be a useful feature to add to online flirting channels - "eye contact increases as a function of positive attraction, and romantic relationships are one of the few circumstances in which prolonged gazing into another person's eyes is considered acceptable." Bruce and Young discuss an alternative understanding of the relationship between facial expressions and emotion that is not based solely on a system of discrete categorization. They introduce the work of Woodworth and Schlosberg, which distinguishes the perceptual coding of facial expressions along two dimensions. 1) Pleasant to unpleasant 2) Increased attention to the external world or rejection and shutting it out. Such an imagining allows for a richer representation of emotion, which would be very useful in an online environment, where text messages could be accompanied by perhaps a visual image representing a discrete emotion(smiley face), but the color or hue of that image could be determined by its positioning within the emotion circle, which would provide additional information regarding just HOW happy the person was. In discussing face to face communication, Bruce and Young point to some of the discrepancies that exist between behavior in face-to-face environments and that observed in linked video environments. They infer that although video links allow for a rich experience, the fact that participants "cannot see each other's environments" and as a result "cannot see to which objects participants are paying attention", results in a less informative interaction than face-to-face. Some of the work produced by the Tangible Media Group involving transparent video screens and other alternative approaches to remote collaboration attempts to tackle this problem.(See Augmented Spaces Readings). readings: Bruce, Vicki and Andy Young. In the Eye of the Beholder: The Science of Face Perception, chapter 4 and 6. Zebrowitz, Leslie. Reading Faces, chapter 2 and 3.   back