New Technology that Unmasks Your Hidden Emotions ... for others to Exploit?

Using Psychology and Data Mining to Discern Emotions as People Shop, Watch Ads; Breeding Privacy Concerns

Paul Ekman, perhaps the world’s most famous face reader, fears he has created a monster.

The 80-year-old psychologist pioneered the study of facial expressions in the 1970s, creating a catalog of more than 5,000 muscle movements to show how the subtlest wrinkling of the nose or lift of an eyebrow reveal hidden emotions.

Now, a group of young companies with names like Emotient Inc., Affectiva Inc. and Eyeris are using Dr. Ekman’s research as the backbone of a technology that relies on algorithms to analyze people’s faces and potentially discover their deepest feelings. Collectively, they are amassing an enormous visual database of human emotions, seeking patterns that can predict emotional reactions and behavior on a massive scale.

Dr. Ekman, who agreed to become an adviser to Emotient, says he is torn between the potential power of all this data and the need to ensure it is used responsibly, without infringing on personal privacy.

So far, the technology has been used mostly for market research. Emotient, a San Diego startup whose software can recognize emotions from a database of microexpressions that happen in a fraction of a second, has worked with Honda Motor Co. and Procter & Gamble Co. to gauge people’s emotions as they try out products. Affectiva, an emotion-detection software maker based in Waltham, Mass., has used webcams to monitor consumers as they watch ads for companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Unilever PLC.

The evolving technology has the potential to help people or even save lives. Cameras that could sense when a trucker is exhausted might prevent him from falling asleep at the wheel. Putting cameras embedded with emotion sensing software in the classroom, could help teachers determine whether they were holding their students’ attention.

But other applications are likely to breed privacy concerns. One retailer, for instance, is starting to test software embedded in security cameras that can scan people’s faces and divine their emotions as they walk in and out of its stores. Eyeris, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it has sold its software to federal law-enforcement agencies for use in interrogations.

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