title: Automated facial coding software outperforms people in recognizing neutral faces as neutral from standardized datasets.
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.
authors.affiliation: The Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lewinski
keywords: automated facial coding; face recognition; facial expression; neutral face; non-verbal communication