Article Review

The Face: Uncovered

Wiradisastra, Grace and others. August 5, 2002. The Naked Face: Can you read peoples
thoughts just by looking at them?Depok: Universitas Indonesia.

This article is about the research reading the face and the people behind it. I chose this
article because its rather interesting. Perceiving the nature of people isnt easy, more so in the
instantaneous way of face reading, but there are those who do it with ease. Discovering the rules
that govern facial expression is a step to a better understanding of us humans, and that sounds
exciting.
In this world, there exist people who are able see through others, their intentions and
personality. To Paul Ekman, a psychologist that studied in the University of California, sought an
explanation to this. In his early days, he went to a variety of places, and he concluded that
expression was not in fact culturally determined, including faces. Paul Ekman acquired the help
of Silvan Tomkins, who taught psychology in Princeton and a great face-reader, for his research.
Together, they identified about three thousand faces that seem to mean something, based on their
muscle movement.
The writer is trying to tell his readers that it is possible to read peoples thoughts by just
looking at their faces by informing us that there are people that can consistently do it and
research on this is being done since the 1960s. I like these kinds of things, by that I mean things
that involves the human mind. To know the reasons of someones action, to perceive, analyze
and predict them is very useful in everyday life, and its pretty cool. The nice thing about this
article is he gave some examples of people face-reading, providing the readers something
tangible to hold onto. He also told the researchers back story, where they came from, what they
did in their careers and their credentials, making the article more substantial and easier to
believe. Although, I dont like how the writer divided the article into three parts, it is rather
puzzling to me. He could very well just make this into one long article. He also did not explain
what happened after Ekman and Tomkins identified the many faces representing human emotion.
The readers are left to wonder if their research was accepted by other psychologists, or maybe
there are others who did the research more thoroughly. Although we could just find out about this
in the internet, it would be nice if the writer just included this. Its already a long article, another

paragraph wouldnt mean much. It would go swimmingly with the writers goal of making this
article.