AUTHOR=Lewinski Peter TITLE=Automated facial coding software outperforms people in recognizing neutral faces as neutral from standardized datasets JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=6 YEAR=2015 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01386 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01386 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

Little is known about people’s accuracy of recognizing neutral faces as neutral. In this paper, I demonstrate the importance of knowing how well people recognize neutral faces. I contrasted human recognition scores of 100 typical, neutral front-up facial images with scores of an arguably objective judge – automated facial coding (AFC) software. I hypothesized that the software would outperform humans in recognizing neutral faces because of the inherently objective nature of computer algorithms. Results confirmed this hypothesis. I provided the first-ever evidence that computer software (90%) was more accurate in recognizing neutral faces than people were (59%). I posited two theoretical mechanisms, i.e., smile-as-a-baseline and false recognition of emotion, as possible explanations for my findings.