Our daily interactions with people or situations are defined by our expressions, predominantly facial. Our expressions are determined by our internal learning process, which would have evolved uniquely for each individual, thereby contributing to unique expressions for varying situations. For example, if an emotion of surprise is elicited, the person’s reaction could be surprise with a hint of anger or surprise with a hint of a smile. The response to stimulus, thus, is unique per individual, at times including a combination of subtle expressions.
A limiting factor to emotion elicitation is that not all individuals are expressive about their emotions, and are often able to hide some of the key expressions at will. However, this will not prevent them from exhibiting some minimal expression that denotes a person’s emotion at that instant of time. This is referred to as a micro expression, which typically lasts for a fraction of a second and can uniquely represent a person’s emotion [1].
Our work is about exploring the possibility of using micro expressions to augment usable privacy and security. Read our position paper (presented at SOUPS 2014) to find out more.
More to come!
References
- P. Ekman. Micro Expressions. Available online at: http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expressions/