Quick brain teaser to workout your frontal lobes: Can you read this face?

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Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, in dis­cussing the human brain’s frontal lobes in his excel­lent book The Wis­dom Para­dox, high­lights that “exec­u­tive intel­li­gence” includes the abil­i­ty to “pen­e­trate oth­er people’s minds, and that starts with an inter­est in oth­er people’s minds.”

And, what is a good win­dow to “pen­e­trate oth­er people’s minds” and iden­ti­fy oth­er peo­ple’s emotions?

A face.

Psy­chol­o­gist Paul Ekman is well-known for his decades-long research on how to iden­ti­fy emo­tions through facial expres­sions which, some­times con­tro­ver­sial­ly, is being used in affec­tive com­put­ing and oth­er nascent fields. In sum­ma­ry, he found sev­en emo­tions that are expressed in our faces in fair­ly uni­ver­sal­ly con­sis­tent ways:

• Sur­prise
• Enjoy­ment
• Sad­ness
• Anger
• Fear
• Dis­gust
• Con­tempt

Here’s a quick brain teas­er to work­out your frontal lobes, based on the image above: From left to right, top then down, what emo­tion does each facial expres­sion sug­gest to you?

Feel free to share your answers with a friend or col­league and see if you agree :-)

Fun fact: As part of his research, Dr. Ekman learned how to con­scious­ly manip­u­late 43 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol and even awareness.

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To explore more fun brain teasers, puzzles and games and challenge your cognitive ability:

• 25 fun Brain Teasers and Puz­zles for teens and  adults of any age
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?