After reading the chapter on Empathy, I decided to experiment and learn how to "Spot the Fake Smile." I took a ten-minute, twenty-question test to see if I could determine a fake smile against a real smile.
Before taking the test, I thought it would be simple to detect a fake smile. However, once I started watching the videos, I saw that the test wasn't going to be so easy. While watching some of the videos, I saw that some were obvious but others, not so much. In the chapter Empathy, Pink gives advice by saying that the only way to detect a fake smile, is by looking at the eyes, and I do believe that. Watching the eyes instead of the smile, sometimes, did give me my answer. Here is a video where the eyes gave the answer away:
This video shows that the smile was fake, partially because of the eyes.
Here are more examples of fake and genuine smiles:
When I watched some of the videos that were hard to determine, I started thinking that sometimes I would only be able to tell if someone was faking a smile only if I really knew them. For instance, I can definitely tell when my sister has a fake smile and when she doesn't just because I know her and her personality, as goes for some of my friends. Watching these people on the videos, however, I had no clue what their names were or what their personality was like. So, for me, I think determining what kind of smile a person is giving you has to deal with whether you know them or not.
