Your social intelligence [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Jeff the Green

2015-01-23, 07:54 PM

That is much, much higher than I expected. Another anti-socialite over here.

I wonder if social phobia might have a similar effect as domestic abuse, where the victim becomes hyperaware of their abuser's mental state so as to try to avoid triggering abuse. If we're extremely worried about negative reactions from other people we might become particularly sensitive to others' mental states.

Kind of makes me wish I were doing research in psychology. It'd be interesting to test whether that's true, and also to test whether sociophobes are significantly better at recognizing negative emotions than positive ones.

I don't think this is a particularly good test. There's a big difference between being shown a photograph with no time limit and a multiple choice question, and actively trying to ascertain someone's state of mind whilst carrying on a conversation.

Maybe, but I suspect that the skill-set's the same even if this is an easier task. The difficulty people with autism have with this test demonstrates that you can't reason your way through it.

Cristo Meyers

2015-01-23, 08:59 PM

33 out of 36, which surprised the hell out of me.

Though I suppose it shouldn't, I've been pretty good at reading people in certain situations before.

I wonder if social phobia might have a similar effect as domestic abuse, where the victim becomes hyperaware of their abuser's mental state so as to try to avoid triggering abuse. If we're extremely worried about negative reactions from other people we might become particularly sensitive to others' mental states.

Kind of makes me wish I were doing research in psychology. It'd be interesting to test whether that's true, and also to test whether sociophobes are significantly better at recognizing negative emotions than positive ones.

That is an interesting question. I don't think it'd be the exact same, for obvious reasons, but the effect could definitely be similar.

Anarion

2015-01-23, 09:22 PM

28, which apparently beats the average but somehow makes me feel inadequate compared to all the geniuses in this thread. :smalltongue:

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-23, 09:48 PM

27 out of 36. Which makes me the low man on the totem pole thus far. :smallbiggrin:

I wish they told you which ones you got wrong, though. I'd be interested, for example, in seeing whether I was better at "reading" the men or the women, etc. etc.

(My gut feeling is that I did better with the men than the women. This feeling, of course, could be totally wrong.)

golentan

2015-01-23, 10:06 PM

Jeff the Green

2015-01-23, 10:07 PM

I wish they told you which ones you got wrong, though. I'd be interested, for example, in seeing whether I was better at "reading" the men or the women, etc. etc.

(My gut feeling is that I did better with the men than the women. This feeling, of course, could be totally wrong.)

I'd be interested too. There's a pretty well-known cognitive bias in heterosexual men that we overestimate women's interest in us. I wonder if extends to this, making us choose the "interested", "aroused" etc. options more than warranted.

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-23, 10:22 PM

I'd be interested too. There's a pretty well-known cognitive bias in heterosexual men that we overestimate women's interest in us. I wonder if extends to this, making us choose the "interested", "aroused" etc. options more than warranted.

Yes, that could well be the case. Though, admittedly, I didn't pick "aroused" even once. Apparently, I'm not that confident in the effect of my suave and fascinating presence* on the ladies. :smallbiggrin:

(*Note: There is a slight chance that there may be some self-mockery and irony hidden carefully somewhere in this sentence. :smallwink: )

Lord Raziere

2015-01-23, 10:41 PM

30/36...

I find it interesting that everyone here has scored higher than the average... Especially as there are many disorders or proclivities being mentioned which would stereotypically hinder reading others. Do you think that says something about geeks?

well, from my own classes aimed at autistic people like me, they basically said that "neurotypical" people have social skills as sort of like a natural talent, they don't have to work at it. and that high functioning autistics don't have it as a talent, so they have to build it up like an ordinary skill.

thing is, hard work and focused skill beats out natural talent that is never utilized. so it could just be geeks having to work so much for our social skills that we become better at them in some ways? might be possible. I'm not saying anything for certain though. we don't seem to have anyone who are actually socialites taking the test- they're probably off busy actually being social- so not enough info to really draw any conclusions.

Grinner

2015-01-23, 10:46 PM

thing is, hard work and focused skill beats out natural talent that is never utilized. so it could just be geeks having to work so much for our social skills that we become better at them in some ways? might be possible. I'm not saying anything for certain though. we don't seem to have anyone who are actually socialites taking the test- they're probably off busy actually being social- so not enough info to really draw any conclusions.

I think you're playing into the geek archetype too much.

Starwulf

2015-01-23, 11:04 PM

30/36...

I find it interesting that everyone here has scored higher than the average... Especially as there are many disorders or proclivities being mentioned which would stereotypically hinder reading others. Do you think that says something about geeks?

I think it says(at least if you were like me growing up) that we had to learn to read bullies expressions very, very quickly in highschool to avoid getting beat on regularly. I know that was certainly my case when I was younger. Because I'm as anti-social as a person can get(I live on top of a mountain, and rarely come down, I'm virtually a hermit), and I scored 31/36 on the test, and I'm pretty sure I know the ones I got wrong because I second-guessed myself on them.

Flickerdart

2015-01-23, 11:34 PM

30/36. I think my answers were very skewed towards "emotions that would appear in film noir" because of the black and white photos and the cropping making it impossible to tell that the people weren't wearing fedoras and trench coats.

AdmiralCheez

2015-01-23, 11:43 PM

30/36, which is a bit lower than I thought, considering I've recently been studying emotional states to better my drawing ability, particularly focusing on the eyes. Oh well, that's still better than average. I guess I should go back to practicing.

Knaight

2015-01-24, 02:10 AM

22 (though it might be interesting to see how I did when I wasn't particularly tired). I suspect the high scores seen are a statistical artifact of people who did well being more likely to report - though a British cultural standard was explicitly stated, an age standard alluded to (assuming the absence of a really sharp break at 18) and similar, so it could just be that the demographics of the test takers favor this particular set-up.

EDIT: Incidentally, I'm actually very much an extroverted people person type.

The_Snark

2015-01-24, 02:39 AM

21 for me. Not really a surprise, I'm somewhat introverted and I've been told I avoid making eye contact. Although given the trend in this thread, maybe I ought to be surprised. :smalltongue:

SiuiS

2015-01-24, 02:53 AM

25, with the caveat that after the first question I stopped trying. Some I'm confident on (the ones I bothered to mimic) but some I actively chose the least likely choice of the two it could be to see if I was really bad at this.

...

That was a terrible decision in hindsight because the test doesn't tell you much about which ones are what. I would like the data though. See if there are trends, like more men look aghast or more women look flirty.

factotum

2015-01-24, 03:02 AM

23 here. As long as I beat the 9 that I would have got if I'd been picking entirely at random I count that as a win, frankly! :smallwink:

ranagrande

2015-01-24, 05:21 AM

I got a 31. That's better than I thought I would get while taking it, but I have always been pretty good at reading people.

Eldan

2015-01-24, 06:08 AM

30/36. Tried to do it quickly without thinking too much.

Honestly, I tend to be terrible at reading people in real life. Or I thought I was. This test confuses me. In most cases, I was thinking that two might be appropriate and chose rather randomly. I avoid eye contact, I don't like meeting or being with people and I am suspected to be on the autistic spectrum and most certainly have social anxieties.

Brother Oni

2015-01-24, 06:17 AM

29 here, which is about right - I tend to be quite good at reading aggressive body language, but I dislike making eye contact.

Castaras

2015-01-24, 07:12 AM

26, the average. Although some of them I chose randomly because the eyes looked nothing like any of the options given.

Cespenar

2015-01-24, 08:04 AM

33/36, though some of the choices could have been arranged better, I think. There was one with "confident" and "joking", for example, but those two expressions could be the same in many instances, i.e. you have to be confident to sell jokes. Eh. I'm probably nitpicking.

Jay R

2015-01-24, 10:56 AM

This is an experiment. It's a question, not an answer.

They might be calibrating. I suspect that they are trying to find differences in interpretation by age and by sex. (I noticed that I was picking a positive interpretation for all women's eyes. Is this simply because I'm an older male?)

In any event, the ability to read eyes may or may not matter. The best people persons read tone of voice, word choice, body position, etc.

Closet_Skeleton

2015-01-24, 05:34 PM

which is actually scientifically validated.

Your faith in science in this area is, unsettling.

well, from my own classes aimed at autistic people like me, they basically said that "neurotypical" people have social skills as sort of like a natural talent, they don't have to work at it. and that high functioning autistics don't have it as a talent, so they have to build it up like an ordinary skill.

Its essentially unknowable if that's an actual natural talent or not. It might be something they learn in the first few years of life and having to try harder to develop that skill might be more like over-coming a learning disability. The main recent trend in social sciences has been to avoid nature vs nurture arguments as unhelpful and simplistic.

Plenty of high functioning autistic people shouldn't have any impairment to social intelligence, its the Aspergers variant that's associated with being unable to read social situations, not autism in general.

Its called an autistic Spectrum because its a diverse range of traits, two autistic people may have nothing in common. I'm perfectly normal according to some tests and autistic according to others. Any generalised claim about such a group must be taken with a grain of salt.

How good I am at reading emotions isn't that relevant when usually I'm too shy and exhausted to want to try. Being useless in practice doesn't stop me passing lots of theory tests.

Gavran

2015-01-24, 06:52 PM

Scored 30. Suffer from severe social anxiety, currently untreated: when I was a regular student years ago I would become artificially nauseous returning to college after the weekend. I just last week had my first day at a new school and prior to that had probably only left my house about twice a month, typically for grocery related purposes or transporting the one friend I interact with in meatspace to and from my house.

The results of this test are useful when you average them across many people, but they are likely to be inaccurate for any individual person. I would attribute my, and the scores of most of us who self-identify as antisocial, to this. We're pretty far from "many people" still, but it's interesting to consider possible explanations regardless.

Tvtyrant

2015-01-24, 07:12 PM

I got a 26, and I can tell you why. The more the eyes were pointed away from me the harder it was to tell what the heck they were expressing, with one of them almost exactly matching (>_>). I couldn't tell if they were trying to use the eyes looking away as an indicator or not, as usually eyes flick and don't stare off in some direction.

Lanaya

2015-01-24, 07:40 PM

This isn't really testing social intelligence. It's testing your ability to read emotions by looking at a static black-and-white picture of eyes, which is a specific aspect of social intelligence. It's like measuring someone's academic intelligence by making them write a paper on the death of Franz Ferdinand.

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-24, 08:09 PM

I wonder if my lower-than-average (for here) score also reflects the fact that I allowed myself only a timed 5 seconds per picture to decide what emotion was being shown.

Of course, since my score was about average overall, it's probably fairly accurate...

Remmirath

2015-01-25, 02:06 AM

I got 20 out of 36. It seems that is the lowest so far. I'm not too surprised; I've always felt that I have a very low Sense Motive, so to speak. After about halfway through the test, almost all of the expressions simply looked neutral to me, so I picked whatever the most neutral-seeming emotion listed was. The ones with neutrally positioned eyebrows all looked basically the same to me, only with varying levels of being alert or not (which isn't what it was asking, so clearly that wasn't actually the difference).

I have always been highly introverted and have a bit of a tendency to avoid direct eye contact with people (or switch to staring them right in the eye, which I suppose is awkward?), in case anyone's gathering data on that sort of thing out of curiousity.

SiuiS

2015-01-25, 02:18 AM

26, the average. Although some of them I chose randomly because the eyes looked nothing like any of the options given.

What? Ridiculous! These were obviously well designed with no weird answers at all! See?

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee468/WizardPony/examples/374EE283-3DF8-4B02-B373-1725BA8BA8D5.png

Although now, I see a subtle difference in the lay of the cheek between the nearest eye and the far one, indicating a crook of the mouth – she's smiling with only the corner nearest the camera, which I would peg as interested.

But most of these, I had to read the musculature of the face because so much context is missing. And for the older men with sunken faces, or the more finely manicured eyebrows, that was a challenge.

This is an experiment. It's a question, not an answer.

They might be calibrating. I suspect that they are trying to find differences in interpretation by age and by sex. (I noticed that I was picking a positive interpretation for all women's eyes. Is this simply because I'm an older male?)

In any event, the ability to read eyes may or may not matter. The best people persons read tone of voice, word choice, body position, etc.

Actually, there were fewer negative options available for the feminine eyes. I was wondering about that past the third; was it intentional? Etc.

Maybe it's random though? Do they have more than 37 they display?

Torzini

2015-01-25, 02:28 AM

Huh. I got a 29, and like some others in this thread, I suffer from social anxiety and consider myself pretty bad at reading people. A lot of the choices definitely felt like a crapshoot.

I wonder if some of them had more than one correct answer? :smallconfused: Also, I'm not sure how "scientifically validated" I would consider this test lol.

Jeff the Green

2015-01-25, 02:47 AM

Actually, there were fewer negative options available for the feminine eyes. I was wondering about that past the third; was it intentional? Etc.

I don't know if it was intentional (I doubt it) but I know that's one of the scholarly critiques of it. In particular, that it can't really be used to demonstrate differences between men and women because of that imbalance.

Maybe it's random though? Do they have more than 37 they display?

I don't believe so. I'm not sure why no one's made an expanded version. It seems like it would be pretty easy, maybe a few weeks worth of work for an undergrad intern and then an undergrad thesis (maybe a term paper; I'm not super familiar with psych expectations) to validate it.

I wonder if some of them had more than one correct answer? :smallconfused: Also, I'm not sure how "scientifically validated" I would consider this test lol.

It has problems, but it's used fairly often (the revised version has been cited almost 2000 times), seems to correspond to real-world differences in behavior and ability (people with autism score significantly lower on average, for example), and has good test-retest validity.

factotum

2015-01-25, 02:49 AM

Jeff the Green

2015-01-25, 03:12 AM

Maybe the people with social anxiety think more about what other people are thinking than those of us without, and so do better at this sort of test? Just a thought, I've never had that issue myself so don't know how it works.

There's a significant degree of hyper-monitoring others' emotions that, as I speculated upthread, could lead to this, though at least for me I thought I tended to misread others' emotions (leading to paranoia).

goto124

2015-01-25, 07:49 AM

28. I'm anti-social IRL.

Perhaps there should've been a 'not-sure' option? Because there's a 1/4 chance of guessing right even when you don't know? Towards the end, the eyes were getting rather... neutral.

But yea, it tests only a small portion of what makes up 'social intelligence'. For one thing, the environment is artifical. I've seen a TV series which does social experiments in more 'natural' environments, such as the case of the hiding man in an actual pub. Can't remember what it's called though.

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-25, 10:36 AM

comicshorse

2015-01-25, 10:53 AM

29, slightly surprised as I tend to be a bit shy and anti-social ( at lerast with people I haven't really gotten to know)

Jeff the Green

2015-01-25, 01:44 PM

Peebles

2015-01-26, 03:50 AM

30/36, surprising given my current mental state. Seems like working in PR trumps wanting to fight the world today. :smalltongue:

skypse

2015-01-26, 04:32 AM

26/36

I am really good at reading people when it comes to full photos judging pose, gestures, facial expressions etc and this is really frequent for me because I live in a rather expressive country. This test though blew me off. I can't work that good with only a random snapshot of the eyes. Anyway it was a nice test. Thanks for sharing!

Feytalist

2015-01-26, 05:21 AM

31.

I made snap decisions for each, and I was pretty sure I was completely wrong each time.

This raises a question: if you personally believe you're misreading emotions, what's the worth of being right? You won't trust your own judgement anyway.

Shyness, antisocial tendencies, introvertedness shouldn't be any factor, I think. Even an extreme introvert like me can recognise emotions. We just won't be able to do anything with that information. Heh.

Eldan

2015-01-26, 05:47 AM

That's true, I Guess. I was also convinced that I was wrong half the time and then had a lot of points.

Most of the time, I could narrow it down to "Is that a negative or positive emotion?" and then mentally flip a coin between the two remaining.

Torzini

2015-01-26, 06:03 AM

Shyness, antisocial tendencies, introvertedness shouldn't be any factor, I think. Even an extreme introvert like me can recognise emotions. We just won't be able to do anything with that information. Heh.

This is true, haha. I suppose one could even argue (without any evidence on my part, just taking a stab) that those who suffer from social anxiety are in fact slightly better at reading others' emotions, just on account of usually being paranoid about them.

Was an interesting test, in any case. I think the results would be more telling if there were an extended version, or perhaps if we could see a more detailed breakdown of results, such as accuracy in analyzing male vs. female expressions as someone mentioned above.

007_ctrl_room

2015-01-26, 06:55 AM

31 here, but that's pretty much what I expected.

Meph

2015-01-26, 10:54 AM

27 (sharing it for sense of duty towards the forum's statistics), and liked to play it.

Frozen_Feet

2015-01-26, 10:59 AM

I think it's marginally difficult to get truly natural expressions of many emotions in any remotely ethical manner.

More like dead easy. Record people's faces while they're watching an emotional movie, for example. If the movie is sufficiently long, people will effectively forget they're being tested.

Jeff the Green

2015-01-26, 11:35 AM

More like dead easy. Record people's faces while they're watching an emotional movie, for example. If the movie is sufficiently long, people will effectively forget they're being tested.

Maybe. I forget that most people have stronger emotional reactions to media than I do.

(Un)Inspired

2015-01-26, 12:15 PM

30/36 I'm not sure I was scored correctly however.

How do I know that the people who wrote the test and I have the same definitions for words like aroused and irritated? If we don't have shared definitions then how can we be in agreement or disagreement over what someone is expressing?

SiuiS

2015-01-26, 12:38 PM

One thing I'm interested in is the source of the photos. Are these people pretending to have the given emotion, or are these actual photos of people whose mood was somehow later identifiable but who were reacting naturally to something at the time, and didn't know their pictures would be used for this purpose?

If they're acting for it, I can see that as skewing the results upward because of the natural tendency to exaggerate the emotional signals when you're pretending. "Hamming it up" for the camera, in effect.

They were from magazines. Not sure of veracity.

30/36 I'm not sure I was scored correctly however.

How do I know that the people who wrote the test and I have the same definitions for words like aroused and irritated? If we don't have shared definitions then how can we be in agreement or disagreement over what someone is expressing?

This is a reoccurring issue for you isn't it? :(
Definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. The words aren't decided in vacuum; there's a multi decade inertia behind the social context of most of those, based not on what someone arbitrarily decided to an emotion should be, but based on naming an existing, discrete, objective phenomenon. You can trust, at least, that arousal is universal, even if the learned expressions for conveying it are aubjective.

Jay R

2015-01-26, 01:03 PM

In any case, it doesn't matter. The single ability to read eyes, without body language or facial expression, is not "social intelligence".

This was not a test to measure social intelligence. It's an experiment. It is a very controlled measuremnt of reading eyes, for a purpose that we do not know.

Back in college, the psychology department would occasionally run experiments, and pay a few dollars to students who took part. I'd occasionally go over to pick up a few bucks for pizza. At the end of each one, they would give us a questionnaire to fill out, and the one question that always appeared was, "What do you think was the purpose of this experiment?" If you correctly identified it, then your results were not used.

Whatever they are doing here, it was [I]not measuring social intelligence.

(Un)Inspired

2015-01-26, 01:25 PM

This is a reoccurring issue for you isn't it? :(
Definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. The words aren't decided in vacuum; there's a multi decade inertia behind the social context of most of those, based not on what someone arbitrarily decided to an emotion should be, but based on naming an existing, discrete, objective phenomenon. You can trust, at least, that arousal is universal, even if the learned expressions for conveying it are aubjective.

Yup I kissed a radioactive werewolf and have since been eternally cursed with uncertainty.

Definitions are descriptive but we are each using them to define different sets of, in this case, phenomenal expressions of mental states.

A mental state that one might describe as aroused might be described otherwise by another.

Say a man has a certan look on his face, say that he was genuinely expressing how he felt through his facial expressions and say that when he was observed all the observers describe him as looking aroused.

In his mind, however, he does not feel aroused. He feels excited. When he looks in the mirror, he identifies his genuinely-produced facial expression he identifies it as one of excitement.

The man and his observers have different definitions for the same physical phenomenal representation of a mental state.

Errata

2015-01-26, 03:05 PM

I got 31/36, which is something like (http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2001_BCetal_adulteyes.pdf) 90th percentile. This is more than a little surprising because I have really, really bad social phobia.

I also got exactly 31/36, which is a surprising result, because I wouldn't consider myself to have particularly high social intelligence, least of all when it comes to reading expressions. I thought some of the choices were weird because there were a few types of emotions that I wasn't sure how I'd be able to tell from just the eyes, so I avoided whole categories of words entirely but still did OK.

I still think I'm worse at reading people in practice than the test would suggest. I think part of it is just purely down to visual acuity. I'm a little nearsighted and don't wear glasses, so I'd have to be standing right in front of someone to see them as clearly as in this experiment, which is rarely the case, and is much more likely to be the case with only a limited subset of the possible emotions. I'd also have to be staring at them dead on for several seconds to be comparable to this experiment, which again usually not the case, and when it is it is for a more limited range of emotions. Also, there is an element of meta-reasoning whenever multiple choice questions are involved, which is general intelligence and not social intelligence. Often it's obviously not two or even three of the options, so you can tell what it is by process of elimination, but if you had to fill in the blanks you'd be much less accurate. Reading someone's emotions from their facial expressions is harder in daily life than this experiment would suggest.

nedz

2015-01-26, 08:15 PM

27 — and yet I am excellent at reading real people :smallconfused:

SiuiS

2015-01-26, 08:46 PM

SowZ

2015-01-26, 09:17 PM

Madcrafter

2015-01-26, 09:46 PM

(Un)Inspired

2015-01-26, 10:21 PM

Mm. I feel you're borrowing trouble. It doesn't matter if the guy doesn't recognize his arrousal response as arrousal. That's what it is. There's a certain amount of removing subjectivity necessary for conversation, and while I know you feel the lack of utter, complete objectivity is bad, that doesn't mean everything is subjective forever. There's a middle ground. Coming to the understanding necessary to communicate isn't that bad. It's not different than recognizing Chinese and English as separate languages. Maybe you need to calibrate per group, sure. But that isn't a problem. It's possible to have different calibrations per group just like it's possible to switch from Chinese to English based on target audience.

I want to be on board with what you're saying but i don't understand how one decides what is objectively arousal.

You say the guy doesn't recognize his response as arousal yet that is still what it is. Who decides that certain things fall under the header of arousal and certain things don't?

This, I believe is relevant in particular when all we have to make judgements with is the squint in someone's eye.

Drakeburn

2015-01-26, 11:24 PM

19 out of 36.

Then again, I do have autism.

Avloren

2015-01-27, 12:32 AM

I want to be on board with what you're saying but i don't understand how one decides what is objectively arousal.

You say the guy doesn't recognize his response as arousal yet that is still what it is. Who decides that certain things fall under the header of arousal and certain things don't?

This, I believe is relevant in particular when all we have to make judgements with is the squint in someone's eye.

Arousal and excitement mean very nearly the same thing, if you pick one and I pick the other we're not really disagreeing. It's like we both looked at a color and you said it was "greenish-yellow" and I said it was "light green." Our word choice differs, but we can agree it's somewhere on the green-yellow spectrum and definitely not purple or brown; likewise for this study, we can agree that arousal/excitement is not fear or content or something else. I would share your concern about the validity of the test if they gave us a picture with both arousal and excitement as options - then we would not be testing an individual's ability to read eyes, instead we'd be testing their personal arbitrary definition of those two words and what they perceive the (subtle) distinction between them to be - but I don't think there were any questions where two choices were that similar.

I do kind of understand where you're coming from, several times I looked at a picture and thought "Yup, he's definitely excited" and then the options were like "Arousal, Suspicion, Concern, Friendly" - and I had to settle for arousal even though it wasn't quite the word I would've picked, but it was close enough for me to recognize it as their label for the emotion that I would label "excitement." I don't feel like this harms the test as long as all 4 choices are clearly distinct (despite minor variations in what exactly those words mean to different people).

Anyway for the record I got 30.

Creed

2015-01-27, 01:06 AM

30 out of 36. From skimming this thread, it seems to me that our cross-section of the population, while less socially inclined, are actually better at it than we'd like to believe.

Pinnacle

2015-01-27, 01:14 AM

26. Yay, I am above average for my gender.
I'm not social, but am empathic and generally good at reading people. I expected higher.

The man and his observers have different definitions for the same physical phenomenal representation of a mental state.

That sounds more like someone being incorrect than having a different definition.

(Un)Inspired

2015-01-27, 01:47 AM

That sounds more like someone being incorrect than having a different definition.

If that is how you feel can you explain to me who is correct, who is incorrect and why?

I'm afraid I can't tell.

DaOldeWolf

2015-01-27, 01:54 AM

Wow, I expected something like a 10 or an 11 considering I usually tend to rub people the wrong way irl and I tend to need a long and detailed explanation to understand motivations. I couldn't really just look at the pic and guess, I needed to think about head and face position, eyebrows, where they were looking to and how open were the eyes and then try to make my best guess. It wasn't that long of a process, half a minute at most per pic (because I am too lazy to try harder for an online test).

Also, is it just me or were there some pics that were used more than once during the test just with different options on the words available?

My results were: Your score is 30 out of 36.

The_Ditto

2015-01-27, 08:58 AM

The fact that everyone here seems to be scoring in the top quarter make me seriously question the authenticity. In an environment where people would be expected to score high, (a group of politicians or entertainers or something,) that could be expected. On an internet forum about a D&D Webcomic, however...

Yeah, I don't buy this "test" for a second ...

I scored: 27/36 .. which is way too high for me .. seriously ... :) I have no illusions about my social skills (aka non-existent)

In any case, the test "forces" one to choose randomly when you have no opinion or the impression you have isn't an option to choose (which was my case most of time).

They need to add a "No idea, or Other" option to accept that you look at somebody, and have absolutely no clue what they're thinking/feeling ...

Another way to do the test better, would be to provide a list of all 12, 20, or whatever options there are .. FOR EACH PICTURE .. ;) so in other words, it doesn't narrow it down for you in the first place.

Seriously, you want me to choose between:
Hateful, Arrogant, Jealous or Playful ?
it's more of a game of "which one of these things, doesn't belong ... " :)
Most of the time, my answer had nothing to do with the picture .. just picked the option that was the most odd of the others.

Also, is it just me or were there some pics that were used more than once during the test just with different options on the words available?

I noticed that as well, couple pictures came up repeat. I think people might be scoring high because I assume there's more than 1 correct answer for some/most pics.

Jay R

2015-01-27, 09:11 AM

27 — and yet I am excellent at reading real people :smallconfused:

Of course. Real people have facial expressions, posture, tones of voice, movement, body language, meaningful words. The eyes are a very tiny piece of it.

I don't know what they are measuring here, but it isn't social intelligence. They called it that to keep us from thinking about what they really were measuring.

Kornaki

2015-01-27, 11:34 AM

If people would actually read the ending of the test instead of wildly speculating, they would see

Social intelligence and team-based problem solving. Recent research published in Science in 2010 demonstrated that there is a link between how well team members perform on this test and how well the team performs on complex problem solving tasks. In fact, the overall "social intelligence" (or "collective intelligence" as it is referred to in the paper) was more than five times more important to the team success than the average IQ of the team members!

Besides this test, there were two other factors that were found to be important for team success: how equally team members contributed to the conversations (teams where one person dominated the conversation performed less well than those where all members contributed roughly the same), and the number of women on the team (yes, the more women, the better the team did! Sorry guys...).

If you want to hear this from the horse's mouth, here is the paper:

Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(6004), 686-688.

Link to the paper here:
http://mpowir.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ColleciveIntelligence.pdf

There is no claim that the test measures someone's ability to interact with others in a social setting. There is no claim a high score correlates with a more outgoing personality, or anything like that. The claim is that the ability to read people's eyes correlates with working well with others in a group. There is also a claim that people with autism score lower on average, but that says nothing about a non-autistic person who has social anxiety.

Skeppio

2015-01-27, 05:50 PM

I got 33/36. Didn't expect to do so well, I'm usually near-incapable of reading a person... :smallconfused:

SiuiS

2015-01-27, 05:59 PM

30 here, not surprising to me (though maybe to people who know me).

I got the feeling that it wasn't really testing the ability to read the eyes (though that was what the test was originally designed for); something to do with the way the way the words were arranged in non-clickable form around the photo. Maybe it is testing the test itself?

Aye. We know that tests have to be carefully monitored because even things like whether an option is left side or right side, or what specific letters are used for an option, affect people's choices.

If people would actually read the ending of the test instead of wildly speculating, they would see

Link to the paper here:
http://mpowir.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ColleciveIntelligence.pdf

There is no claim that the test measures someone's ability to interact with others in a social setting. There is no claim a high score correlates with a more outgoing personality, or anything like that. The claim is that the ability to read people's eyes correlates with working well with others in a group. There is also a claim that people with autism score lower on average, but that says nothing about a non-autistic person who has social anxiety.

No one is speculating the purpose of the test as far as anxiety and social disorders. They are speculating why they and others in this sample pool scored as they did, and nothing more. Your data about WHAT the test aims to measure has absolutely no bearing and value on WHY the test responses given were given as discussed.

Jeff the Green

2015-01-27, 06:49 PM

No one is speculating the purpose of the test as far as anxiety and social disorders. They are speculating why they and others in this sample pool scored as they did, and nothing more. Your data about WHAT the test aims to measure has absolutely no bearing and value on WHY the test responses given were given as discussed.

Also, we're somewhat surprised by the results because we would expect that (with the exception of certain neurological abnormalities like autism) these skills are largely learned, and so might be inhibited by social anxiety.

Though I did discover that these results are probably correlated with IQ, and I expect most of us have above average IQ as well. Also, apparently doing well on this test correlates with good forum behavior and helpfulness, so it's possible GitP's strict moderation has culled some of the people who would have scored low.

russdm

2015-01-27, 07:16 PM

Your score is 25 out of 36

I am a high functioning Autistic Adult so that is interesting, but when doing the test I kept defaulting to the women looking more happy/interested/flirty while the men were looking more serious/sad/reserved. Then I would look at the options and try to pick what I felt fit it best.

I also found all of the women attractive too/desirable. I don't know if that would be considered good or bad. The guys reminded me of either Jeremy Clarkson, Benjamin Sisko, or Sir Alec Guinness, (Meaning, Clarkson-Crazy/zany/Nuts; Sisko-Intense/Dedicated/Warm/Personable; Guinness-Austere(Means somewhat aloft and grandiose but friendly, right?)/Gentlemanly/Proper. Or a psycho creepy dude.

None for a Doctor Who though or a Picard. Sad.

Vizzerdrix

2015-01-27, 07:44 PM

I got an 18.

Knaight

2015-01-28, 02:51 AM

SowZ

2015-01-28, 05:37 AM

It's not just that subset. It's the subset of people who specifically looked into a social intelligence thread, who then took the test, who then decided to share their result. The last of these alone is going to drastically skew the data when people who do worse than average systematically don't report (with some exceptions) - it's an effect that crops up all the time with voluntary studies.

Sure, but then the sheer number of people scoring above thirty, what should be a very select few, sets off red flags as well.

Mordokai

2015-01-28, 06:27 AM

17 out of 36

Expected, I guess.

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-28, 08:50 AM

Sure, but then the sheer number of people scoring above thirty, what should be a very select few, sets off red flags as well.

Well, I think that we now have enough data so that we can make some statistics about the statistics. :smallwink: Which may or may not be interesting.

Number of people scoring a specific number so far:
SCORE-PEOPLE
36 - 0
35 - 0
34 - 0
33 - 3
32 - 1
31 - 7
30 - 11
29 - 6
28 - 3
27 - 4
26 - 4
25 - 2
24 - 0
23 - 1
22 - 1
21 - 1
20 - 1
19 - 1
18 - 1
17 - 1
16 and below - 0

From this we can derive an average score of 27.875.

That's only slightly above the average noted and gives me a little more inclination to credit the test's robustness, in that regard at least.

Telonius

2015-01-28, 09:57 AM

17 here - hooray, tied for last! I generally disregard the eyes when I'm trying to figure out people's emotions, though - probably comes from living around so many politicians who are well-practiced at controlling their facial expressions.

Knaight

2015-01-28, 12:42 PM

Sure, but then the sheer number of people scoring above thirty, what should be a very select few, sets off red flags as well.

It depends on what the distribution is supposed to be. If it's supposed to be some sort of super narrow distribution, then it would be odd. If it isn't, not so much.

Flickerdart

2015-01-28, 12:46 PM

I would be shocked if the distribution was anything but wide - it's far more likely that organic capabilities vary smoothly from "really good" to "really bad" rather than a clump in the middle around "mediocre" and then rare outliers that are either geniuses or hopeless.

Jeff the Green

2015-01-28, 12:51 PM

From this we can derive an average score of 27.875.

That's only slightly above the average noted and gives me a little more inclination to credit the test's robustness, in that regard at least.

That's highly skewed, though. The median is 29, meaning that ~50% scored in the 75th percentile or better.

Anarion

2015-01-28, 01:32 PM

That's highly skewed, though. The median is 29, meaning that ~50% scored in the 75th percentile or better.

There's also that gigantic cluster between 29-31, which probably shouldn't be happening.

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-28, 01:34 PM

That's highly skewed, though. The median is 29, meaning that ~50% scored in the 75th percentile or better.

Yes, it is running a bit high. I wonder if they're trying to fine tune it by seeing what scores people get?

Temotei

2015-01-28, 01:44 PM

Right before sleeping, I got 31/36. I fell asleep literally less than a minute after taking it and setting my phone down, so I guess I was tired? Iono.

But yeah, some of them I had to pick the least bad option instead of the best option, really. Which is probably not good unless the study is looking at something else (which wouldn't surprise me). While the test may be good enough in a lot of situations (e.g. group work), that might just be to cover it up at least somewhat. If the test wasn't any good at what the testers said it does, suspicion might more commonly be raised and results may be skewed from there.

Taet

2015-01-28, 01:45 PM

I have two questions. The statistics question is how many of the expressions were on women. The social question is how did you tell?

I am going to go back and pretend every picture is a picture of a woman and see what happens to my score.

Icewraith

2015-01-28, 02:15 PM

I got a 25. The average the test stated was 26.

I'm having not the best day and am tired, and I had no idea where they were coming up with the options for some of those.

Especially "aghast". None of the facial expressions looked anything like what I'd associate with "aghast".

Edit: I'd expect a fairly tight distribution, since reading other people's faces is something it's hard to avoid doing every day.

Telonius

2015-01-28, 02:24 PM

Possible confound in our stats: if everybody's clustering around 29, how likely is it someone is going to self-report a 10? (Apart from weirdos like me, of course).

Flickerdart

2015-01-28, 02:27 PM

Edit: I'd expect a fairly tight distribution, since reading other people's faces is something it's hard to avoid doing every day.
It's fairly infrequent to read only the expression, and then have your suspicious about the mood verified. Much of the time, you will have a suspicion but never learn whether or not you were right.

noparlpf

2015-01-28, 08:21 PM

Huh. 30/36. Considering I have an Asperger's diagnosis I'm kind of surprised. I think I took about twenty minutes on it though, so it's not like I just glanced at each and had a gut feeling.

Shekinah

2015-01-28, 08:43 PM

21 for me. Not really a surprise, I'm somewhat introverted and I've been told I avoid making eye contact. Although given the trend in this thread, maybe I ought to be surprised. :smalltongue:

Same score here, but I'm a huge introvert and took this while overcoming some personal anxiety.

Jeff the Green

2015-01-28, 09:05 PM

I'd expect a fairly tight distribution, since reading other people's faces is something it's hard to avoid doing every day.

Yes, but just about everyone talks to other people every day, and I guarantee you there's variation in how good people are at that task.

The social question is how did you tell?

Actually, can anyone explain how they tell? It seemed like I just knew.

I am going to go back and pretend every picture is a picture of a woman and see what happens to my score.

How do you even do that?

Taet

2015-01-28, 09:32 PM

We all missed something important. In the very start of the test it says

Why we are doing this research
We are trying to understand how the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures. We are also trying to understand how people use input devices (such as mice, touchpads, etc.) when they work on demanding tasks.

The second part is maybe the important part.
I took this test a long time ago and the words were clickable.
This time they were not and the buttons were off to the side of the screen I do not use.
I put my desktop icons over to the right on top of the keyboard's numberpad.

How do you even do that?
I imagined every pair of eyes put on the face of a frowning old grandma. With a hair scarf and old lady whiskers :smallbiggrin:

The first time I got 29.
This time I imagined that every pair of eyes was a woman and I got 22. :smallconfused:

#6 #15 #37 flat foreheads from one side to the other were the hardest to pretend were women.
#9 had a very sloped forehead but that meant his eyes were up high on his face and that is a man face too.

Jeff the Green

2015-01-28, 09:36 PM

We all missed something important. In the very start of the test it says

Why we are doing this research
We are trying to understand how the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures. We are also trying to understand how people use input devices (such as mice, touchpads, etc.) when they work on demanding tasks.

The second part is maybe the important part.
I took this test a long time ago and the words were clickable.
This time they were not and the buttons were off to the side of the screen I do not use.
I put my desktop icons over to the right on top of the keyboard's numberpad.

I don't buy that it's that important, though. If it were, we probably wouldn't see a huge difference in mean, but we would see increased variance. Instead we see skewing and a weird peak at 30.

trueexciting

2015-01-28, 09:39 PM

Your score is 25 out of 36
How did others do on this test?
The average score is 26. But we found that not everyone does the same on this test:

Women, on average, score half a point higher than men.
Young people under 18 score substantially lower than adults.

nyjastul69

2015-01-28, 09:55 PM

I've only read the first page of the thread. 31/36 for me. I thought I'd do better. I'm in no way an introvert, but I'm certainly not an extrovert either. I couldn't see all the eyebrows, those are key. This would have been better served with color photos. I'm an older(45) male and I think my errors were with the females, especially the ones whose pictures were not facing the camera.

ETA: After reading the rest of the thread now, hmmm... There are many good points raised. I didn't think about my state of mind when taking it. I live in RI, USA. We just got hit with 2 feet of snow. I just got done blowing and shoveling for 7/9 work hrs. The remainder were fixing broken machines and standing on the roof watching my boss. I'm freaking beat. I've had a few drinks, and I'm enjoying a meatball with cheese sammich. I've got more shoveling to at my domicile tonight and some laundry to do. Just an FYI on condition.

All that said, body language is very important in ragards to emotion. I'm usually extremely good at reading people. That's why I expected the results I got, or higher really. I'm also very good at team exercises.

Mordokai

2015-01-29, 02:38 AM

Possible confound in our stats: if everybody's clustering around 29, how likely is it someone is going to self-report a 10? (Apart from weirdos like me, of course).

That's a valid concern. I may not have given my result if I knew how much of an social idiot I really am, compared to the rest of the people :smalltongue:

I mean, I know that. And I probably would have given the result anyway, since you know, what do I care what a bunch of strangers think about me. But I would have at least consider it, instead of blindly putting it out there.

SiuiS

2015-01-29, 03:09 AM

It's fairly infrequent to read only the expression, and then have your suspicious about the mood verified. Much of the time, you will have a suspicion but never learn whether or not you were right.

Indeed.

And, there may have been several "aghast" people, but really all I saw was old people face. When your eyelids don't raise anymore, I have to use other visual cues. The ones that were excised...

nyjastul69

2015-01-29, 05:54 AM

I'd like to take this test again with a bias. I probably will range similarly. The more I think about it, the more it seems like an IQ test. Or any test for that matter. The only result ends up being the one you look for. An IQ test says nothing about intelligence. It only speaks to ones abilty to take an IQ test, nothing more, nothing less. Life will tell you if are smart/engaging/or not. A test will never do so.

SarahV

2015-01-29, 12:43 PM

I got 34 out of 36. I wouldn't have thought I would do so well. Same story as a lot of folks here - slowly overcoming social anxieties, etc. Plus I am not good at outwardly showing emotion (even when I am happy and excited about something people often can't tell the difference).

OTOH, I've always been good at multiple choice tests.

The_Ditto

2015-01-29, 01:43 PM

Indeed.

And, there may have been several "aghast" people, but really all I saw was old people face. When your eyelids don't raise anymore, I have to use other visual cues. The ones that were excised...

So we need more options?

Aghast, Flirtatious, Bored, Old ?

:smalltongue:

Brother Oni

2015-01-29, 01:48 PM

Actually, can anyone explain how they tell? It seemed like I just knew.

How open the eyes were, eyebrows shape and angle, hints of lines and wrinkles around the cheeks (suggestive of smiling), same again around the forehead/middle of the brow).

Since these are professional staged photographs, the angle of the face towards the camera also can be indicative - someone front on is more likely to be aggressive/confrontational.

noparlpf

2015-01-29, 01:52 PM

Actually, can anyone explain how they tell? It seemed like I just knew.

I think framing it as a multiple choice question skews the results significantly. Giving me four options significantly narrows down the nearly-infinite choices. So I looked at the options, tried to pretend to feel those things, tried to make faces, and sort of guessed from there. In other words, I can't recognise most emotions from eyes without thinking hard for a minute or two.

Especially black-and-white shadowy eyes. Very helpful, study designers. :smalltongue:

-D-

2015-01-29, 03:28 PM

I admit 28/36. I could have sworn I did this for 29 last time. Although I did it once for 26.

Also I don't know what aghast means, so I just skip that emotion :P

Closet_Skeleton

2015-01-29, 04:58 PM

Actually did it, got 29. Got Bored around #26.

I felt a bit guilty assuming every woman with long eyelashes was supposed to be interested, then I read at the end that they're taken from magazines so they probably were supposed to be. No one is going to take out an advertisement about how boring women find users of their aftershave. I also assume that the test designers didn't actually hunt down the people in those magazines and therefore we're actually being asked to have the same readings the guy who put the labels on had.

In any case, it doesn't matter. The single ability to read eyes, without body language or facial expression, is not "social intelligence".

A scientist on a radio program a few weeks ago claimed that people are better at identifying liars from audio-recordings than when interacting with actual people or in audio-visual recordings. No idea if you get similar effects with just close up photographs but it does suggest that removing information can make things easier, which probably goes double for certain varieties of autism and the generally socially anxious.

Apart from that famous Soviet montage experiment where people read different emotions onto the same footage of a man in closeup depending on what was shown before the closeup. Or that other study that shows children automatically assume foreigners are angry from photographs. Or various other studies which all might not relate to any real human interaction.

And, there may have been several "aghast" people, but really all I saw was old people face. When your eyelids don't raise anymore, I have to use other visual cues. The ones that were excised...

I didn't see any aghast people, but that's a extreme strong word to me and none of the faces seemed to have anything extreme about them.

Anarion

2015-01-29, 04:59 PM

I admit 28/36. I could have sworn I did this for 29 last time. Although I did it once for 26.

Also I don't know what aghast means, so I just skip that emotion :P

It means surprised and horrified. For example, "he was aghast when he returned home and saw that he had been robbed."

enderlord99

2015-01-30, 12:48 AM

For example, "he was aghast when he returned home and saw that he had been robbed."

"Aghast" is too strong of a word if he were merely "robbed."

Your example should be something like "he was aghast when, upon returning home, he discovered that his house had been torn down and replaced with a giant, highly phallic ice sculpture, made of frozen blood and covered in painted-on electric-lime-colored runes."

SiuiS

2015-01-30, 12:50 AM

I dunno. I think your understanding of aghast is too strong. People are often aghast in TV shows when someone at a party makes a social gaffe, for example.

This is an instance where definition has strayed from etymological roots due to use.

enderlord99

2015-01-30, 01:00 AM

I dunno. I think your understanding of aghast is too strong.

What word would you use to describe someone's likely emotions in such a situation? I thought "aghast" was one of the strongest emotional words out there (as a much stronger version of "scared) alongside "ecstatic" (stronger version of "happy") and infuriated ("angry")

SiuiS

2015-01-30, 01:52 AM

Problem would be, for me, shocked, scandalized, and aghast are all various spectrum positions of the same thing. Intensity is conveyed in other ways. It's never just "they were shocked/very shocked/aghast", if you feel the word is insufficient to convey depth you add examples or comparisons.

Which means between you and I not agreeing on definition, application and intensity, we've likely given (un)inspired a complex :smalltongue:

Anarion

2015-01-30, 03:11 AM

Stunned or shocked would be my choices for a scene so strong that it overwhelms. Aghast is frequently used for understated emotion. Prudish elderly women are frequently aghast at the impoliteness of young people today, for example.

Susette Gray

2015-01-30, 08:29 AM

I don't know if I should be angry or depressed - 16/36 :smallmad:

The_Ditto

2015-01-30, 08:54 AM

I don't know if I should be angry or depressed - 16/36 :smallmad:

Uh, how about neither ?
;)

You need two more options for a proper question there ..
So I recommend adding the options:

Aghast (due to the popularity of the discussion :) )
and
Pleasant

:smallbiggrin:

Bulldog Psion

2015-01-30, 01:56 PM

"Aghast" is too strong of a word if he were merely "robbed."

Your example should be something like "he was aghast when, upon returning home, he discovered that his house had been torn down and replaced with a giant, highly phallic ice sculpture, made of frozen blood and covered in painted-on electric-lime-colored runes."

Yes, that would make me aghast, at least. :smallbiggrin:

(Un)Inspired

2015-01-30, 04:50 PM

-D-

2015-01-31, 06:07 AM

Regarding social intelligence. Here is something very interesting I found: how heart (as in source of heartbeats) influences your empathy. It's nothing too outer worldly, basically if you brain is good at detecting your body's current signals, it acts on those signals.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141205-the-man-with-two-hearts

EDIT: Interesting thought occurs. If you are better at reading your body's signal or controlling it, then consecutively, it could increase your ability to read people's feelings and control them.

Cuthalion

2015-01-31, 02:27 PM

28, which apparently beats the average but somehow makes me feel inadequate compared to all the geniuses in this thread. :smalltongue:

Same here. :smalltongue:

smuchmuch

2015-02-03, 05:13 PM

21/36

(Though probaly not helped by the fact I wasn't alway 100% sure what some of the worlds uesd to call emotion meant)

(Un)Inspired

2015-02-03, 05:56 PM

21/36

(Though probaly not helped by the fact I wasn't alway 100% sure what some of the worlds uesd to call emotion meant)

Exactly!!!

BWR

2015-02-04, 02:22 AM

Blugh! A terrible test, and the whole 'social intelligence' or 'EQ' thingy really gets on my nerves. Call it what it is: reading people.
Maybe it would be somewhat useful as part of a larget set of tests but on its own it isn't really worth anything.

Jay R

2015-02-04, 09:54 AM

Blugh! A terrible test, and the whole 'social intelligence' or 'EQ' thingy really gets on my nerves. Call it what it is: reading people.

A very tiny piece of reading people, ignoring facial expression, body position, tone of voice, movement, words, etc.

Temotei

2015-02-05, 07:34 PM

A very tiny piece of reading people, ignoring facial expression, body position, tone of voice, movement, words, etc.

And frankly, all of these things are subject to culture and confounds. Different cultures will have different meanings for certain expressions, words, and so on, and these things might be different on an individual level, as well.

Not that getting a high or low score on this test means nothing...it's just that you should take results with a shaker of salt and move on.

BWR

2015-02-06, 02:10 AM

A very tiny piece of reading people, ignoring facial expression, body position, tone of voice, movement, words, etc.

Sorry. My point was that SI/EQ is reading people and yes, this test only focuses on a very small part of that.

Serpentine

2015-02-06, 02:30 AM

Sooooo uh... 34 out of 36 <.<

Blugh! A terrible test, and the whole 'social intelligence' or 'EQ' thingy really gets on my nerves. Call it what it is: reading people.
Maybe it would be somewhat useful as part of a larget set of tests but on its own it isn't really worth anything.
I thought it was pretty dumb too, but I feel like you're putting a lot more onto it than it was claiming. It says right at the start that it is just about eyes, which is only a small part of social intelligence and is only "linked to" it rather than "this test will reveal how socially intelligent you are!", and at the end it specifically says it's probably not really accurate for each individual but is really only good as a population-based experiment. All in all, I feel like you're criticising this test for things it never pretended to do.

Brother Oni

2015-02-06, 02:55 AM

And frankly, all of these things are subject to culture and confounds. Different cultures will have different meanings for certain expressions, words, and so on, and these things might be different on an individual level, as well.

The test (or rather experiment) also mentions this at the start, that all the pictures are from British/American media from the 1980s.

While your point is a valid criticism, a lot of people are reading too much into what this test is actually claiming as Serpentine said.

Serpentine

2015-02-06, 03:25 AM

Yeah, the test is specifically and explicitly ABOUT cultural differences. That's the entire point. Says so right there in it.

hymer

2015-02-07, 05:58 AM

Yeah, the test is specifically and explicitly ABOUT cultural differences. That's the entire point. Says so right there in it.

OTOH that might be a smoke screen. Maybe they really wanted to meassure how fast people went from picking an option to clicking next, and the whole picture business was just to distract and get a truer reading. :smallsmile:

@ OP: I scored 31. :smallcool:

Undee

2015-02-07, 06:03 PM

33/36, which is waaay better than expected. I'm actually quite baffled by that result, given how little human contact I have during my job (almost zero). Then again it's weekend and I spent all day watching crime shows, so maybe that helped oO

CurlyKitGirl

2015-02-07, 06:35 PM

30 or 31, I've already forgotten. 'Twas surprising as I personally don't see myself as having a lot of skill reading people's facial or body language. Anyway, I tried to spend as little time as possible on each photo, as if I was actually only glancing at a person and usually my first thought about the eyes was listed or was a synonym of what was listed/in the same rough emotional area.
Though I found myself thinking 'those are [emotion] eyebrows' rather than anything else; so I wonder if it'd be possible to do a similar thing with just eyebrows.
Would have liked to see a woman's photograph without the options 'interested' or 'flirtatious' though, and maybe more with men's eyes. And looking back, though I didn't take specific note for obvious reasons, I found that most of the male eyes were given options related to anger or a negative emotion like 'dispirited', 'nervous' or guilty; whereas a lot of the women's options were 'friendly', 'flirtatious', 'affectionate' and so on.
Or was that just me?

Serpentine

2015-02-09, 02:32 AM

OTOH that might be a smoke screen. Maybe they really wanted to meassure how fast people went from picking an option to clicking next, and the whole picture business was just to distract and get a truer reading. :smallsmile:
It could be, but that seems like a needlessly complicated assumption to me. And even if you're right, criticising the test because "but cultural stuff could make a difference!" when it literally says, second click in, right at the start, quote "We are trying to understand how the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures." seems pointless, unfair and also doesn't say much good about one's reading comprehension (or maybe people are just too lazy to read the introduction to things like this, which is actually fair enough really).

tl;dr, even if they're being dishonest about their intentions for some convoluted reason, criticising it for "neglecting" something that is the whole point = wat.

Eldan

2015-02-10, 07:21 AM

In that case, wouldn't it be interesting if they also had some faces that weren't American and Caucasian?

Serpentine

2015-02-10, 07:58 AM

In that case, wouldn't it be interesting if they also had some faces that weren't American and Caucasian?

Now THAT is a good criticism! Apparently they got the images from magazines so maybe that's more the source of the issue, but yeah, that's a problem.

Eldan

2015-02-10, 08:50 AM

Now THAT is a good criticism! Apparently they got the images from magazines so maybe that's more the source of the issue, but yeah, that's a problem.

Now I'm trying to come with a good design for race x culture. One could probably make something decent with just Black Africans, Black Americans, White Americans, White Eastern Europeans and American Asians and uhm, Asian Asians (is there a better term for that? Wikipedia suggests "Mongoloid", which seems quite problematic.)

Really interesting would be if one had pictures from a culture that had little contact with outside humanity. Like an isolated rainforest or island culture.

Serpentine

2015-02-10, 09:29 AM

"American Asians"? :smallconfused:

Eldan

2015-02-10, 09:41 AM

Yeah, as I said. Terrible terminology, that. People of Asian descent living in the united states. Or elsewhere outside of Asia, where they are a minority. You know, like African-American means an American with ancestors from Africa.

Torzini

2015-02-10, 10:43 AM

The typical word order there is Asian American. Same as African American, etc; just stick the "X" in front.

Good critique though. I feel like the test would be far more useful if all the photos weren't A) exclusively white people... and B) showed other parts of the body used in social expressions other than the eyes. Heck, even the rest of the face.

Brother Oni

2015-02-10, 01:33 PM

Really interesting would be if one had pictures from a culture that had little contact with outside humanity. Like an isolated rainforest or island culture.

Surprisingly, this has been done with the Fore tribesmen in Papua New Guinea by Paul Ekman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman) (Ekman et al, 1971, Constants across cultures in the face and emotion, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 17: 124–129), where certain emotions were found to be universal. This work subsequently led to the FACS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System) identification system which was the basis of the TV show Lie to Me.

The typical word order there is Asian American. Same as African American, etc; just stick the "X" in front.

Out of curiosity, what is the American term for somebody from the India subcontinent?
For Americans and other aliens, in the UK, British Asian means somebody from the Indian sub-continent, rather than someone from SE Asia, which is what Asian American tends to refer to.

noparlpf

2015-02-10, 01:46 PM

Out of curiosity, what is the American term for somebody from the India subcontinent?
For Americans and other aliens, in the UK, British Asian means somebody from the Indian sub-continent, rather than someone from SE Asia, which is what Asian American tends to refer to.

Usually just "Indian", but sometimes "Indian-American", which is not to be confused with "American Indian", which may or may not be PC depending on where in the country you are.

Serpentine

2015-02-10, 01:48 PM

In Australia, if you say "Asian" we'll probably think of the "Orient" first: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, maybe Vietnamese. Something I've always found interesting.

Good critique though. I feel like the test would be far more useful if all the photos weren't A) exclusively white people... and B) showed other parts of the body used in social expressions other than the eyes. Heck, even the rest of the face.But again, it explicitly says that the point of the experiment is looking just at the eyes. Yes, it might be an interesting study to look at the whole face, but that's not what this study is for. It's a feature, not a flaw.

Torzini

2015-02-10, 02:43 PM

In Australia, if you say "Asian" we'll probably think of the "Orient" first: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, maybe Vietnamese. Something I've always found interesting.

But again, it explicitly says that the point of the experiment is looking just at the eyes. Yes, it might be an interesting study to look at the whole face, but that's not what this study is for. It's a feature, not a flaw.

Ummm, I didn't say that wasn't the stated point. I said it would probably be more useful were that indeed the case, given that we don't ignore everything but a tiny horizontal strip when we look at a real person's face. :smalltongue:

And yeah, Brother Oni, "Indian-American" is what the term would be. I find it kind of interesting that "British Asian" typically refers to South Asians only, while in America, if you say "Asian American," a lot of people will think of East Asians by default rather than another kind of Asian. It makes sense, of course, given the differing demographics of the two places -- I just find it interesting to note.

Errata

2015-02-10, 03:44 PM

Out of curiosity, what is the American term for somebody from the India subcontinent?

If you want to encompass more than just the one nationality, the generic term would be "South Asian". "East Asian" and "Southeast Asian" are what we normally have in mind when we say "Asian".

Serpentine

2015-02-11, 10:00 AM

In normal conversation, in Australia we'd just refer to them as Indians. Which makes things awkward if the person in question is actually Sri Lankan or Pakistani...

Eldan

2015-02-11, 10:08 AM

Makes me wonder why there's no European-Americans, though. Or European-Australians. (Though I shouldn't complain, as far as I know, we don't even have any expressions for that in German that aren't three lines of text long.)

Serpentine

2015-02-11, 10:16 AM

We don't really use that terminology in Australia, as far as I've heard. So no African-Australians or Asian-Australians, either.

Ummm, I didn't say that wasn't the stated point. I said it would probably be more useful were that indeed the case, given that we don't ignore everything but a tiny horizontal strip when we look at a real person's face. :smalltongue:
Okay, but then it wouldn't be a better version of this study, it'd be a completely different study. You don't criticise The Hobbit because it's not Lord of the Rings. It's smaller and more focused for a reason.
And personally, I thought it was really interesting how much you can tell without the rest of the face - which is probably part of the point.

Torzini

2015-02-11, 09:49 PM

Okay, but then it wouldn't be a better version of this study, it'd be a completely different study. You don't criticise The Hobbit because it's not Lord of the Rings. It's smaller and more focused for a reason.
And personally, I thought it was really interesting how much you can tell without the rest of the face - which is probably part of the point.

That isn't the same thing. The self-stated purpose of the test is to measure one's social intelligence (http://kgajos.eecs.harvard.edu/mite/). Note that it doesn't say, "we're trying to see what looking at one's eyes specifically says about social intelligence." It just says they're measuring "social intelligence," period. The entire broad category in one go.

I am suggesting that they take steps to improve the accuracy of the existing goal, possibly by making the test more comprehensive in general. Like including more races, a broader range of physical features, etc. If that requires figuring out how to overhaul the study, or creating other studies altogether, so be it... more studies would collectively/quantitatively give a more accurate picture anyway.

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings were written very differently because when they were written, they were literally meant to achieve different things. The Hobbit was originally intended as a children's tale as well as a standalone book.

That's not the sort of divergence I'm suggesting with this study.

Madcrafter

2015-02-11, 10:43 PM

The self-stated purpose of the test is to measure one's social intelligence (http://kgajos.eecs.harvard.edu/mite/).Um? They don't mention social intelligence at all in the purpose for this particular experiemnt.
Why we are doing this research
We are trying to understand how the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures. We are also trying to understand how people use input devices (such as mice, touchpads, etc.) when they work on demanding tasks.

Torzini

2015-02-11, 11:38 PM

Um? They don't mention social intelligence at all in the purpose for this particular experiemnt.

.......Did you miss the "Test your social intelligence!" banner in literally giant-sized letters on the first screen?

Madcrafter

2015-02-12, 12:36 AM

.......Did you miss the "Test your social intelligence!" banner in literally giant-sized letters on the first screen?

That's not the stated purpose though, it's just the hook to draw people in. They do say it's "linked", whatever that means, but the actual purpose is in the finer print on the following page.

Torzini

2015-02-12, 01:09 AM

That's not the stated purpose though, it's just the hook to draw people in. They do say it's "linked", whatever that means, but the actual purpose is in the finer print on the following page.
Just because they don't mention it word-for-word in that sentence doesn't mean the phrase isn't accurate. If it had nothing (or not as much as suggested) to do with the purpose or results of the experiment, that would make it a false claim.

It's a social intelligence study.

I think you're really reading too much into the letter here. :smallannoyed:

If you're choosing to be picky though, then fine. Whatever the case, I am still referring to the purpose of the study, which does not change my point based on a minor wording issue. And my main point from before was simply that the study could be improved upon, as I am hardly the first poster in this entire thread to suggest.

Serpentine

2015-02-12, 01:52 AM

That isn't the same thing. The self-stated purpose of the test is to measure one's social intelligence (http://kgajos.eecs.harvard.edu/mite/). Note that it doesn't say, "we're trying to see what looking at one's eyes specifically says about social intelligence." It just says they're measuring "social intelligence," period. The entire broad category in one go.

I am suggesting that they take steps to improve the accuracy of the existing goal, possibly by making the test more comprehensive in general. Like including more races, a broader range of physical features, etc. If that requires figuring out how to overhaul the study, or creating other studies altogether, so be it... more studies would collectively/quantitatively give a more accurate picture anyway.

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings were written very differently because when they were written, they were literally meant to achieve different things. The Hobbit was originally intended as a children's tale as well as a standalone book.

That's not the sort of divergence I'm suggesting with this study.

Yeah, no. As said, the study's stated purpose is:
"Test how well you can read emotions of others just by looking at their eyes."
"to understand how the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures."
"This test will investigate your ability to read emotion from the eyes"

I'm pretty sure there was more at the end, but I'd have to do the whole thing again to find it and I don't want to skew their results. Regardless, the "period" does not stand where you put it. The goal is to test how people read emotions using only the eyes and how that varies across cultures, because it is linked to social intelligence. You're trying to say that the entire purpose is what's in the clickbait headline on the tab, while demanding that we ignore the actual description of the study. No.

Like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, this study and the one you want to see are "literally meant to achieve different things". This study is intended to be a very specific look at a very specific part of emotion recognition. By all means say you'd like to see a study that looks at the whole face - I guarantee you they exist - but that's not a legitimate criticism of this study, because that's not what it's meant to do.
Lack of diversity in the eyes used and the weird emotion words you have to select from: totes legit criticisms. The clickbaity heading: totes subject to criticism. It didn't do a thing that was never meant to do: yeah, no.

hymer

2015-02-16, 03:31 AM

It could be, but that seems like a needlessly complicated assumption to me. And even if you're right, criticising the test because "but cultural stuff could make a difference!" when it literally says, second click in, right at the start, quote "We are trying to understand how the ability to recognize emotions of others vary across cultures." seems pointless, unfair and also doesn't say much good about one's reading comprehension (or maybe people are just too lazy to read the introduction to things like this, which is actually fair enough really).

tl;dr, even if they're being dishonest about their intentions for some convoluted reason, criticising it for "neglecting" something that is the whole point = wat.

I just wanted to get this straight: I don't agree with the critique (not that I've thought about it much). I also make no assumptions. I just wanted to point out that we shouldn't feel too sure about what the idea of the test is. Misinforming the test subjects is a tried and true method to make useful experiments; the people making the test are under no obligation to be truthful to us.

sleepy hedgehog

2015-02-16, 04:02 PM

I got 24/32, a little below average.
Which is better than I would have expected. I never actually look at people's eyes. About 1/2 way though I realized all of my decisions were based of the brightness of the pictures, the the rest of the face. (As in the picture of the old man was always some derivitive of tired).

My favorite were when I'd look at a picture and say "she looks happy". And then the choices are anxious, tired, sad and lonely. Uh.... I guess anxious is closest...

Technetium

2015-02-18, 12:18 PM

Your score is 12 out of 36

Oh. Okay. I tried my best. I do have Aspergers, but it's still not very good, is it?

Seems like I'm the odd one out among all of you genius eye-readers.

huttj509

2015-02-18, 08:07 PM

Your score is 12 out of 36

Oh. Okay. I tried my best. I do have Aspergers, but it's still not very good, is it?

Seems like I'm the odd one out among all of you genius eye-readers.

Eh, I got a 22.

And I had plenty of times when looking at the eyes my response was "Oh, he's nervous" and none of the answers were close.

Scarlet Knight

2015-02-19, 08:55 PM

25 , just below average. I guess that's about right but lower than I expected.

Still, I am a pretty poor judge of people...

mrcarter11

2015-02-22, 02:52 PM

I got a 26. Which it said was average. The only thing that threw me off was I'm at least among my peers typically considered the best in the group at gauging things. I also worked in sales and was really good at it. But perhaps I misjudged myself. Fun little test either way.

TechnOkami

2015-02-22, 03:15 PM

I got 27/36.

In the comments section of the test, I said I thought I got around 75% of them correct. Twenty seven divided by 36 is exactly 75%.

Nai_Calus

2015-02-23, 07:18 PM

22, but that's going to include some lucky guesses.

TBH most of the time I had no idea and just picked one that kind of sort of seemed close.

I have clinically diagnosed Asperger's but I don't actually really consider myself high-functioning. I have a really hard time learning anything unless it's presented in a way that makes sense to me(Which isn't necessarily the way it's ever presented) and bad retention because my memory is awful except for like, random useless facts. I'm socially terrible and can't read anything. I also suffer from horrible depression and incredibly low self-esteem.

My last failure to read something while drunk ended up making at least three people hate me, made a friend I'd had for three and a half years turn on me completely overnight without warning, and ended up triggering a series of complete mental breakdowns that literally destroyed my life. Like, I went from being OK-ish and on meds, successfully renting a room and working a job, to off meds, homeless, and having to quit my job to move back home with my dad. :/

So yeah rofl no I can't read crap and my 'social intelligence' is non-existent.