I found this example interesting, and it highlights some of the subtle differences that can exist between expressions (in this case, between a voluntary and involuntary expression):
If I were to ask you to smile, you would flex your zygomatic major. By contrast, if you were to smile spontaneously, in the presence of genuine emotion, you would not only flex your zygomatic but also tighten the orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis, which is the muscle that encircles the eye. It is almost impossible to tighten the orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis on demand, and it is equally difficult to stop it from tightening when we smile at something genuinely pleasurable.I found that interesting in light of the Closed Eye Syndrome I noticed in Anime. I wonder how that affects the way we perceive Anime. If a smiling mouth by itself means a fake expression of happiness while a smiling mouth and closed eyes means genuine emotion, does that make the animation more authentic? Animation obviously doesn't have the fidelity of video or film, but we can obviously read expressions from animated faces, so I would expect that closed eye syndrome exists more because of accuracy than anything else. In my original post on the subject, Roy noted that the reason I noticed closed eyes in anime could have something to do with the way Japan and the US read emotion. He pointed to an article that claimed Americans focus more on the mouth while the Japanese focus more on the eyes when trying to read emotions from facial expressions. One example from the article was emoticons. For happiness, Americans use a smily face :) while the Japanese tend to use ^_^ (which seems to be a face with eyes closed). That might still be part of it, but ever since I made the observation, I've noticed similar expressions in American animation (I just recently noticed it a lot in a Venture Bros. episode). Still, occurrences in American animation seem less frequent (or perhaps less obvious), so perhaps the observation still holds.
Gladwell's book is interesting, as expected, though I'm not sure yet if he has a point other than to observe that we do a lot of subconscious analysis and make lots of split decisions, and sometimes this is good (other times it's not). Still, he's good at finding examples and drilling down into the issue, and even if I'm not sure about his conclusions, it's always fun to read. There's lots more on this subject in the book (for instance, he goes over how facial expressions and our emotions are a two way phenomenon - meaning that if you intentionally contort your face in an specific way, you can induce certain emotions. The psychologists I mentioned earlier who were mapping expressions noticed that after a full day of trying to manipulate their facial muscles to show anger (even though they weren't angry) they felt horrible. Some tests have been done to confirm that, indeed, our facial expressions are linked directly to our brain) and it's probably worth a read if that's your bag.
Roy
I read an article in some science magazine about this- the reading of emotions- a couple years ago. It was really interesting. Part of the article was with a police interrogator who had done a bunch of research into facial expressions and was considered one of the experts at telling when someone was lying.
As far as the animation goes: it'd be interesting to do some research into how animators use the face to express emotion. Given that a lot of people from our generation grew up with exposure to anime, I'd think that at least some animators have adopted or pulled from some of the conventions of anime in their own animation.
Now I sort of want to go back and watch some old stuff like Scooby Doo or some of the old Disney animation to see how that plays out.
Mark
In Gladwell's book, he talks about this guy who could always tell when people where lying. There was apparently some game show in the 60s and he went there to meet with them because he never got a wrong answer or something. It's an interesting subject, and if one were so inclined, they could probably learn the basics pretty quickly. Apparently these guys have a half-hour training tape that works wonders. I'd love to try it out.
It would be interesting to see how old animation works... but then, I've always noticed that old animation is awfully... sparse. There's a lot of looping going on, among other cost saving things. Scooby Doo features especially poor animation, if I remember correctly (it's been a while since I've seen an episode:P)