Emotion-Recognition Software Knows What Makes You Smile
A computer program that reads human expressions may change marketing.
July 16, 2007 — -- A computer program that reads human expressions may bring an about-face in marketing.
Dutch researchers using the software recently for a consumer test project seconded what wise men have always known: Sweets are the surest way to make a woman smile.
Some 300 women in six European countries were filmed as they ate five foods: vanilla ice cream, chocolate, cereal bars, yogurt and apples. Not surprisingly, ice cream and chocolate produced the most happy expressions across the Old Continent.
Researchers chose women -- who tend to be more expressive than men -- at universities, shopping malls and city centers to test foods at face value. Cameras first recorded volunteers noshing, then participants provided a "posed" version of the expression they felt to give a more emphatic face for comparison.
Marketers increasingly use technology to determine what gives consumers bliss. Food and consumer goods giant Unilever, which used brain scans to demonstrate why we all scream for ice cream, hired software developers Theo Gevers and Nicu Sebe from the science department of the University of Amsterdam to run the European tests after reading about their experimental work deciphering the Mona Lisa's smile.
"We know ice cream is a real pleasure food; we turned to technology to back that up," said Mandy Mistlin, consumer scientist at Unilever UK. The software may eventually be used to test reduced-fat and -calorie ice creams to see if they maintain the "pleasure principle," she added.
The software, or others like it, may put a new face on market surveys. For professor Deborah Small of The Wharton School, who recently examined the effects of facial expressions in charity ad campaigns, excitement surrounding these technologies is considerable. The real test, she says, is whether they can become sophisticated enough to predict our responses.
But how does software analyze emotion?
When we smile, frown or grimace, thousands of tiny facial muscles are at work. Emotion-recognition software, or ERS, creates a 3-D face map, pinpointing 12 key trigger areas like eye and mouth corners.
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