Spelling Bee

What emotions do you see here?

14 thoughts on “Spelling Bee

  1. From the begining, approx from 0:01-0:04 i would say anxiety/nervous/(fear). His shoulders a drawn up and at the begining he takes a real shallow breath. And there is some tension in the eyelids.

    Between 0:07-and his answer, it looks like concentration/focus. You can see his lips narrowing between 0:07-0:09 plus his focused “stare”. Like in anger but in context this i guess its focus/concentration.

    Right after he answers he turns away and makes an disgust expression.
    Before he spells is out, he goes back to anxious/nervous/(fear).

    Then he spells out the word, at the same time shaking his head and makes a smile that seems to cover up some sadness. Not sure about the sadness but it looks like there is some quick tension in the lower lip while he is smiling and his chin makes a quick pout. He obviously has no trust in his answer so mabey the sadness is because he is expecting to bust out of the spelling bee.

    At 0:36 a full surprise expression. When he realized he was right his lower lips makes a pout again and his eyes gets a little glazed, as in sadness. But i guess it can be out of relief too when all the tension disappears.

  2. Fear in the beginning, then the disgust that everyone mentions looks looks like a mix of frustratration/fear/concentration its not as angry like as disgust we normally see towards something. I didn’t see the sadness i did see the uncertainty and fake smile during the spelling and of course the shock at the end.

  3. Before answering a little disgust. After answering an interesting progression from surprise to fear to distress/sadness to happiness. It seems the fear and distress was delayed by the need to answer the question and even though he got it right the built up emotion still needed release although no longer appropriate.

  4. I see fear & disgust at the start and then SURPRISE as he gets the answer right. The father (I assume) shows relief and i think he must have been holding his breathe as he exhales deeply and sticks his tongue out.

  5. Great analysis of this!

    He does 2 pretty clear microexpressions of disgust at around 0:11 into the clip. Notice that he does this away from the panel, perhaps to cover his emotions. We don’t know what he’s disgusted with. Also, its important to note that this is a high stakes situation, where micros usually leak out. He was obviously feeling a lot of pressure at this point and frankly, who wouldn’t?

    There is an obvious macroexpression of surprise after he answers the question and he is overwhelmed with emotion that he got the answer correct.

    As to the possible sadness or fear, we’d have to get Dr. Matsumoto to weigh in with his thoughts!

  6. I saw slight fear, concentration, determination, disgust, very subtle micro of sadness, disgust again, huge surprise/shock maybe with a quick flash of sadness mixed in (or maybe that’s just a confused emotion because of the soon to follow tears of joy/relief from being so emotionally overwhelmed), overwhelmed joy (with a little welling of tears of relief in his eye), and more surprise and joy.

    As he was sitting down, the way he made all the rapid body movements and his gaze darting back and forth, I felt like his emotions were so overwhelming at that point that he was trying to find someone nearby with whom he could more openly share them.

    The first subtle sadness I believe I saw was around 0:28, as he’s lifting his face, just where his lips are coming together but before he licks his lips. It’s very brief and very subtle (subtle-micro) if it’s there but it feels like it is to me. It only lasts a frame or two, I had to watch it frame by frame to be sure.

  7. I watched this with my 6 and 8 year old boys. we saw: anxiousness, then disgust/contempt, then insecurity, shock, happiness extreme joy! . How awesome to see!

  8. (in addition to humintell comment: masked disgust 00:30-00:31) down to the seven universal expressions – i’d say there is a third “disgust” expression right after he repeats the word ‘negus’, and then shakes his head and entertains a big ‘smile’ – the smile alters the typical ‘disgust-mouth’ by elongating it horizontally and there is no real nose-wrinkling – yet the naso-labial fold action is noticeable and strongly reminds me of disgust; and I believe one could assume, that, as the first time, his disgust is directed towards the question (oh s*** why this, why me, this is disg….. (but of course we all will never know…) and this time he is forced to look at the panel, so he has to mask his disgust.

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