Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to stuff from
Speaker 1: the Science Lab. This is Alison madam Out, the science
Speaker 1: editor at how stuff works dot com. And this is
Speaker 1: Robert Lambs, science writer at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And you know we um we communicate a lot at work,
Speaker 1: uh via email? We do. Yeah, even though we're just,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a few yards away from each other.
Speaker 1: We do. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they have the habit of
Speaker 1: um popping over your cube wall and annoying you, but
Speaker 1: only from the right side. Well, you know, so much
Speaker 1: as annoying me as just shocked me because I always
Speaker 1: have my headphones in and so yes, you do so
Speaker 1: jamming out in your cube writing. I have a hard
Speaker 1: time figuring out how you jam out and right at
Speaker 1: the same time, I don't know how I would write
Speaker 1: if I didn't jam out. It's the only way to
Speaker 1: do it. Listening to music with words doesn't that to
Speaker 1: strack to you know, I can't listen used to when
Speaker 1: I had a more brainless job and I was doing
Speaker 1: and like pagination for a newspaper, that I could listen
Speaker 1: to the whole podcasts and you know, where their discussions
Speaker 1: and stuff and and you know, and and I can
Speaker 1: do my job, but like here, as long as it's
Speaker 1: not somebody giving me a lecture, you know. Yeah, most
Speaker 1: of the lyrics to the things I listened to aren't
Speaker 1: really that deep anyway. So sometimes we do communicate by email,
Speaker 1: and uh, you you're you throw in an emoticon sometimes
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, I'll throw it in emoticon just too.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like real writing, in my opinion, shouldn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of exclamation points a streamer. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: sometimes you're doing a short email, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: an exclamation point can make all the difference in in
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm level, you know. Uh. And likewise, if you're
Speaker 1: not too sure about about how your you know, words
Speaker 1: are going to be received by the recent recipient, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you throw on a little smiley face or
Speaker 1: I don't really use said faces in in work emails,
Speaker 1: but but sometimes there's a little like annoyed one, you know,
Speaker 1: where you do like the you know, the two eyes
Speaker 1: and then kind of like a sideways kind of um,
Speaker 1: you know mouth. But I'm never really sure when to
Speaker 1: throw it in a moticon, to be honest, have I
Speaker 1: ever sent one used on an email to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you were saying earlier, you just you rarely emote anyway,
Speaker 1: basically a robot. But you know it's like as a writer,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can generally say exactly what I
Speaker 1: want to say. The email is a tricky method of communication. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes you gotta shoot him off fast. You don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of time. And it's the same with like text.
Speaker 1: You know, you know you you just you know you.
Speaker 1: You want to convey the message quickly and non starting
Speaker 1: an argument, so you just be like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: just throwing a smiling So tell us a little about
Speaker 1: the history of the emoticon. No, this is this is
Speaker 1: actually pretty interesting. It is. Yeah, we can pinpoint the
Speaker 1: exact moment when emoticon sprang into existence, and that was
Speaker 1: even four am on September nine, And that was thanks
Speaker 1: to you, gentlemen, and Professor Scotty Falman Carnegie Mellon. And
Speaker 1: he was suggesting their use. He was talking about the
Speaker 1: limits of online humor and how you know to really
Speaker 1: get across comments that are meant to be taken lately
Speaker 1: and said, so he said, and I quote, I proposed
Speaker 1: the following character sequence for joke markers. Um, you can't see,
Speaker 1: so I will tell you. It's the the smiley face,
Speaker 1: the colon dash parenthesy and read it sideways. So let
Speaker 1: me read that to you. Aain. I proposed the following
Speaker 1: character sequence for joke markers, and he gave an emoticon
Speaker 1: and then he said, read it sideways. Yeah. Now he
Speaker 1: included the knows I rarely include the notes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I used a simplified version. But this was this
Speaker 1: was early in the emoticon creation process, and it's really
Speaker 1: really skyrocketed since then. As I think everybody knows, there's
Speaker 1: just and there's a huge array of emoticons you can
Speaker 1: whip out in uh in your daily email correspondences aside
Speaker 1: from just smiley frownie brownie. I like how they all
Speaker 1: get the e. Yeah, there's there's a vampire one where
Speaker 1: blood suck your Yeah. I don't know when you would
Speaker 1: use that. And there are different ones in Japan too, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean especially when you have a different well, actually
Speaker 1: I saw a chart where it's like in the Japanese
Speaker 1: emoticons have a tendency to they tend to want to
Speaker 1: make there's more um horizontal instead of vertical. And and
Speaker 1: then also when you get into other languages, you have
Speaker 1: more characters and you can really create crazy emoticons that
Speaker 1: like look like ogre faces and and cats and well
Speaker 1: cats and the cat one you can actually do uh
Speaker 1: with just it's like an equal sign and then ah,
Speaker 1: what's the carrot? Yeah, like a carrot and then a
Speaker 1: dot and then a carrot, then an equal sign. What
Speaker 1: wila you have? Like a have you used that one before?
Speaker 1: Are you pretty psyched to use it? Yeah? I don't
Speaker 1: know when I'm gonna, you know, unless I just start,
Speaker 1: like if after text my wife would be like, did
Speaker 1: you feed the blank? And then I've thrown the mooticon
Speaker 1: for the cat. But that's longer than typing out you know,
Speaker 1: texting cat. Yeah, but we do that all the time.
Speaker 1: It's like around here, Um, you know, when people ride
Speaker 1: how stuff works, at least in the office, they'll put
Speaker 1: HSW because it's shorter on paper. But then you hear
Speaker 1: people saying, yeah, we really need to think about hs
Speaker 1: W and then you're like, that's not shorter. You didn't
Speaker 1: save any syllables and saying hs DEB instead of how
Speaker 1: stuff works. That's true. People should just be rational. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we were saying, emoticons are awfully handy when you
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to convey your tone or your feeling.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they help out when our voices can't do
Speaker 1: the same. And uh and and I think one of
Speaker 1: the even more important things, and what we're really going
Speaker 1: to talk about in this podcast, um, is that they
Speaker 1: give they provide you a face during faceless correspondence. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't see my facial expressions when I'm
Speaker 1: emailing you or texting you. Unfortunately, we don't have video
Speaker 1: phones yet. Well, I guess we have had some like
Speaker 1: poorly conceived ones, but they're not widespread by any means.
Speaker 1: They're out there, Yeah, they're out there, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's not like you know, um to Android's dream of
Speaker 1: electric sheep, you know, and they're all calling on the
Speaker 1: video phones. Yeah, I mean, it's not quite dick Tracy yet.
Speaker 1: But but but indeed, yeah, it's not a standard part
Speaker 1: of our Most people do skype quite a bit though. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so emoticons are pretty handy, but they really don't compare
Speaker 1: when it comes to the human face and what it
Speaker 1: can convey. Um, I mean think about it. Now, what
Speaker 1: do you I'm trying to look at you and I
Speaker 1: can't really see your mouth, Robert, are you smiling or
Speaker 1: frowning or scowling? What would you describe your facial expression
Speaker 1: right now? Now, now there's a smile because you think
Speaker 1: I'm being stupid. But but yeah, like the very basics,
Speaker 1: the smiles, the frowns of scows. You can look at
Speaker 1: somebody and you instantly have a good idea of what
Speaker 1: they're there. You know, their whole attitude is um. Right.
Speaker 1: So for example, a person who's trying to gain your
Speaker 1: trust may smile um. Someone trying to scare you will
Speaker 1: scowl um. And we use these faces, you know, not
Speaker 1: just to win trust, but you know also influence and hey,
Speaker 1: manipulate others. Yeah, I mean, a nice smile will get
Speaker 1: you pretty far, as they say, you say, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they say it, but everybody knows it. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you get pulled over by the police,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do. You're probably gonna put on
Speaker 1: a smile or maybe you're going to frown. You're really sad,
Speaker 1: you know, cry, Yeah, you could bust out the tears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: emotional manipulation goes a long way, and it's you can
Speaker 1: probably do a lot more. I mean, there's no problem
Speaker 1: about it. You can do a lot more in person
Speaker 1: than you can do with an emoticon. Right. So, according
Speaker 1: to researcher Paul ekman Um, he found that humans share
Speaker 1: at least seven primary facial expressions with identical meetings. Um. So,
Speaker 1: first time we have happiness, and you know, while you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, think about happiness. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Are you raising, you know, the corners of your lips?
Speaker 1: Are you wrinkling your cheeks a little bit, narrowing your eyelids?
Speaker 1: Are you producing those lovely crow's feet, those wrinkles in
Speaker 1: the corners of your eyes? And then of course we
Speaker 1: move on to sadness. What is that feature? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we all know it's sadness. Features snarrowed eyes,
Speaker 1: eyebrows brought together, downturn, now pulling up a bunch of
Speaker 1: the chin, all that good stuff. And there's fear, uh
Speaker 1: and the yeah, wide eyes And apparently a fear is
Speaker 1: very similar to surprise. Yes, I believe that. And it
Speaker 1: also has a good flaring of the nostrils involved in fear,
Speaker 1: which I never noticed before so much I noticed in cartoons,
Speaker 1: not really in people. Anger. It's generally a lot of
Speaker 1: eyebrow emotion. Yeah, And there's disgusted, um, you know, no scrunching, right,
Speaker 1: you know, anytime you see somebody smelling something bad, raising
Speaker 1: of the upper lip, downcast eyebrows, narrowed eyes, um, surprised
Speaker 1: like we mentioned, and then contempt contempt of course, and
Speaker 1: that's notable for raising one side of the mouth into
Speaker 1: a sneer or a smirk. Yeah, and a lot of these,
Speaker 1: I mean it's things that we pick up from other people,
Speaker 1: like in a very early stage we we we don't consciously,
Speaker 1: well most of us, unless you like a what a
Speaker 1: sociopath or something, you know, you're not consciously using all
Speaker 1: of these facial expressions. They just come out. They it's
Speaker 1: an expression of what you're feeling inside, right. So, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes we have these things called micro expressions. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think Chuck in Josh did a good podcast
Speaker 1: on micro expressions and there's also an excellent article on
Speaker 1: the side if you guys want to check it out.
Speaker 1: And these are super interesting. These these are these just
Speaker 1: very fleeting expressions that you know occur across your face, uh,
Speaker 1: that you really can't control. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of times they're like real tells of what you're feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're maybe you're faking that smile or
Speaker 1: that frowned for the police officer. But if the police
Speaker 1: officer was able to tell be able to read your
Speaker 1: micro expressions, then he might be he would be able
Speaker 1: to tell like, oh, well, you're lying about something, or
Speaker 1: you're really nervous about something that's in the trunk. You know,
Speaker 1: well maybe not. There's not a specific micro expression for oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, there's something there's a body in the trunk.
Speaker 1: But you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you heard it. But back when the whole baseball
Speaker 1: scandal was erupting with Rodriguez and McGuire and some of
Speaker 1: those folks, there was a there's a guy who analyzed
Speaker 1: Alex Rodriguez uh an interview in which he was asked
Speaker 1: about whether he took some of these substances. And the
Speaker 1: psychologist or or researcher involved in it analyzed Rodriguez's face
Speaker 1: for micro expressions, and you know, he would stop it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, point to that, look what he's doing there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something with the brow as I remember correctly, Um,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, as is supposed to be like
Speaker 1: a real telling micro expression of lying. Yeah. So there
Speaker 1: are three thousand of these different expressions according to uh
Speaker 1: Paul Ekman. Yeah, and he's really like the godfather of
Speaker 1: micro express mr micro expression. And these things can be
Speaker 1: pretty brief too, like they're only they may flash across
Speaker 1: your face for a second, all right, I mean they
Speaker 1: occur so fast that they're not even perceived by the
Speaker 1: conscious mind, uh, by either the person expressing them or
Speaker 1: the person observing them. And as few as ten percent
Speaker 1: of the people, yeah, are even aware of seeing micro
Speaker 1: expressions when tested. So it's it's really like below the
Speaker 1: surface of conscious perception, you know. Yeah. So we have
Speaker 1: all these handy expressions and micro expressions as the case,
Speaker 1: maybe to convey how we're feeling about the world, But
Speaker 1: what what about instances when when we can't when we
Speaker 1: can't emote. Yeah, I mean that's again it comes back
Speaker 1: to the emoticons that we throw out during emails. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, that our emails are not really life
Speaker 1: or death, you know. I means sometimes they are, but
Speaker 1: but for the most part, you know, it's critical deadline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's critical deadline. Or it's like you forgot to pick
Speaker 1: something up at the grocery, that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: But there is a situation where it is very often
Speaker 1: life and death or there's a huge potential for the
Speaker 1: situation be life and death. And that is when you
Speaker 1: get behind the wheel of an automobile. Right. So driving
Speaker 1: is a communal activity. I mean, we tend to think
Speaker 1: of driving as an individual experience because a lot of
Speaker 1: us are just hopping in the cars and you know,
Speaker 1: driving off to work. Yeah, you're sealed in there with
Speaker 1: your music or what have you, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: his stuff from the Science Lab podcast and really just
Speaker 1: you're into it. But you know, you have other drivers
Speaker 1: on the road, of course, and you can't really easily
Speaker 1: communicate with other folks, you know, next to you. You
Speaker 1: can't say, hey, I just cut you off and I'm
Speaker 1: really sorry about that, or you can't say, hey, you
Speaker 1: just cut me off and what the heck was that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's um uh, there's a there's a guy by name
Speaker 1: of Dr Leon James, who we're talking about Mr Face earlier.
Speaker 1: This guy is also sometimes called Doctor Traffic and he
Speaker 1: Dr Traffic, Jonathan Strickland wrote an article about road rage,
Speaker 1: and it was just kind of funny when you consider
Speaker 1: that Strickland doesn't drive, so he wrote the article on
Speaker 1: road race. But I mean, I don't collide Adams or
Speaker 1: anything our particles, you know, so and I wrote about
Speaker 1: that is a good point. That is a good point. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're great writers here, but we don't have to actually
Speaker 1: do the things we write about. But but anyway, in
Speaker 1: the in the article, um Dr James points out several
Speaker 1: um aspects of driving that contribute to rate rising, frustration
Speaker 1: and stress levels that often boil over into royal into
Speaker 1: not roid rage, but road rage um. And these include immobility, constriction,
Speaker 1: lack of controlled Um, we get very territorial. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: denial and loss of objectivity that means we tend to
Speaker 1: overlook our own faults and place the blame on others. Uh. Unpredictability.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of this is when you're I think
Speaker 1: in life in general, we create like a story around
Speaker 1: ourselves where we're the center and everything else is just
Speaker 1: you know, gunk, you know, ecocentrics. Yeah, and you get
Speaker 1: in the car and it's the same deal. It's like
Speaker 1: it's all about like, like, how did that that guy
Speaker 1: was out to cut me off? Yeah, you cut me off?
Speaker 1: Why is this light not cooperating with me? Come on bus?
Speaker 1: You know it's like that's that's that's how we get.
Speaker 1: But then another interesting um, the fact that James points
Speaker 1: out is ambiguity. Um, there's no culturally agreed upon way
Speaker 1: to signal an apology to another driver. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: the whole like thanks, you know, for letting me out
Speaker 1: while I was trying to take a you know, a
Speaker 1: right or left. But but beyond that, it's easy to
Speaker 1: misinterpret someone's actions as a sign of aggression or insult. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's pause for a second, because I think that there
Speaker 1: are a couple of ways out there that people do
Speaker 1: communicate and okay, let's hear him. Okay, So first we
Speaker 1: have the wave like you were just talking about, and
Speaker 1: the wave is hey, thanks you just let me in.
Speaker 1: And I've apreciate that. I look for the wave after
Speaker 1: I let somebody in, because you expect the way because
Speaker 1: you're gonna be mad if they don't. Right, You're like,
Speaker 1: do do you get do you get? Like? Like I
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, buddy, I'm gonna be late and you
Speaker 1: didn't even wave to me. No, no, I would never
Speaker 1: do that. And then you, of course there's a horn.
Speaker 1: But as you're pointing out earlier when we're talking about
Speaker 1: this podcast, um, you know a lot of polaces have
Speaker 1: cracked down on using your horn. You can't blare it.
Speaker 1: People don't really like all that noise pollution. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: sure you can. You can use the horn. There's the
Speaker 1: light tap. If say you're sitting at a light and
Speaker 1: the person in front of you hasn't gone, you kind
Speaker 1: of give the light tap. But but I have to
Speaker 1: admit I think I've been in situations where the person
Speaker 1: has honked back at me after I honked for them. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on the honked And I also i've done that,
Speaker 1: like I've honked back at somebody. Why I don't know,
Speaker 1: because when we're behind the wheel, we're different creatures, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're like more prone to anger. And I'm there
Speaker 1: was like one I forget what I was doing. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was tweeting or something. I don't know, but it's
Speaker 1: a legal Robbert, Well now it is. But this is
Speaker 1: a different um. Back in the days when you could
Speaker 1: months ago, well I know I was at it stopped,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, yeah, I was at a light
Speaker 1: and suddenly it turned green and I didn't know that,
Speaker 1: you know, did it turned. The dude behind me gave
Speaker 1: me a little hog and this like like anger rose
Speaker 1: and I'm like, what are you honking at me for?
Speaker 1: And then I honked back and then I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: the guy would totally correct to honk at me. Um,
Speaker 1: I would like I would like to also put a
Speaker 1: signal out there, UM, the hold up the hands to
Speaker 1: acknowledge fault or blame. Sometimes I will do this if
Speaker 1: I have you know, if I've done something like oh shoot,
Speaker 1: I should not have done that, so you know, I
Speaker 1: hold up my hands. Yeah. Well I used I used
Speaker 1: to be more um yeah, expressive in my irritation to
Speaker 1: other drivers, but I I finally have just settled on
Speaker 1: just shaking my head from side to side and like disappointment.
Speaker 1: And it works two ways. A it's very subtle, and
Speaker 1: it allows me to to let some of the you know,
Speaker 1: the anger out in a very calm manner. And also
Speaker 1: other drivers aren't going to see it and attack me.
Speaker 1: Because once I had that happened, I was I was
Speaker 1: on the way to like a job interview, and we
Speaker 1: were it was like raining, and we're like stuck in traffic, right,
Speaker 1: and there's like some like annoying trucker behind me. Why
Speaker 1: would you mess with the trucker. I wasn't messing with
Speaker 1: the trucker. It was just kind of like like he
Speaker 1: was like really writing my tail. Like no, it was
Speaker 1: the heat, I know, because he got so irritated, and
Speaker 1: I think I like throw my hands up or something,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, but I mean I'm in
Speaker 1: the car in front of him, right, and then he
Speaker 1: like loses it, gets out of his vehicle and like
Speaker 1: walks up beside my car and and like it it's
Speaker 1: like like you know, just jetting wildly, like he wants
Speaker 1: me to get out and like fight him in traffic
Speaker 1: or something. But the weird thing was it's like I
Speaker 1: I look up at him right and make eye contact
Speaker 1: with him, and I imagine the look on my face
Speaker 1: was kind of like what what's going on? There's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just kind of completely shocked. So he
Speaker 1: like he makes eye contact with me, and it's like
Speaker 1: he instantly like calms down and goes back to his car.
Speaker 1: And it's this is not like a Jedi mind trick
Speaker 1: thing with me. Either. It's like he made eye contact
Speaker 1: with me, he saw my face, you know, and and
Speaker 1: then everything was human again. Okay, that's really interesting you
Speaker 1: say that because I'm sorry, guys, we are talking a
Speaker 1: little bit about road rage, but you are welcome to
Speaker 1: share your road rage stories with us, and now I
Speaker 1: want to share one of my own. Um, similar thing happened.
Speaker 1: I was driving home. I used to have a long
Speaker 1: commute from from a different job, and there's a particular
Speaker 1: intersection and a gentleman just kind of you know, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden crossed in front of me. It was
Speaker 1: really tight, and um, I gave him a long loud horn.
Speaker 1: I should not have done that. I do not suggest
Speaker 1: that I'm not proud of myself for giving the long
Speaker 1: loud horn, but I did. And he stopped the car,
Speaker 1: and he got out of his Mercedes convertible and he
Speaker 1: came toward me in my little eccount of box, and
Speaker 1: I rolled up the window and unlocked the doors and
Speaker 1: just stared straight ahead. There was no eye contact. I
Speaker 1: would not look at him because I was afraid of
Speaker 1: provoking him with eye contact. So that's interesting that you
Speaker 1: said it, I wouldn't look at him, but yours kind
Speaker 1: of abated based on that. Well, I have seen some
Speaker 1: reports to some studies that to to talk about like
Speaker 1: icon tach Um not doing any good after a certain
Speaker 1: point if everybody is still angry, because it's because then
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you have angry drivers, and then
Speaker 1: if they're like only the only it's like that you
Speaker 1: just compound, you compound what they're feeling, and you confirm
Speaker 1: any kind of negative feelings if you like make finally
Speaker 1: make eye contact with the other person and they're like
Speaker 1: scowling at you, because then it's just like you know,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, oh, these drivers are monsters. You know what's
Speaker 1: with Atlanta's drivers? Then you make eye contact with them
Speaker 1: and you're like, look, I was totally right. Look how
Speaker 1: angry they are? Right right? Okay, So all of these
Speaker 1: road rage stories, what are you gonna do? What's the
Speaker 1: driver to do? How are you going to emote? Clearly
Speaker 1: to throw up the hands has multiple meanings. People aren't
Speaker 1: always so psyched about the light tap on the horn,
Speaker 1: and not everybody can drive a convertible, right, So there
Speaker 1: have been some efforts to bridges communication gap among drivers. Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk about one called the Vehicle Signaling System. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was like a patent I believe, Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: was by some guys named Jerry E. Beasley and E.
Speaker 1: Scott Geller. And this particular to allow drivers to display
Speaker 1: a message like sorry to other drivers. According to the
Speaker 1: patent quote, the messages associated with the use of the
Speaker 1: communication system are selected for enhancement of safety and to
Speaker 1: avert the negative responses associated with read rich cool sounds
Speaker 1: like a good thing. Don't think it ever quite took off.
Speaker 1: Between like two thousand one and two thousand five, Japanese
Speaker 1: engineers working with Toyota took a shot at it. Along
Speaker 1: similar lines. They had this project called the pod and
Speaker 1: and it's really I mean, it really sounds overly ambitious,
Speaker 1: but it's but which is probably one of the reasons
Speaker 1: you don't see these this technology out on the roads today.
Speaker 1: But they basically said, let's make a car where that
Speaker 1: you have sensors that will read, um, the emotions of
Speaker 1: the driver and convey them through the car like the
Speaker 1: car would emote, which instantly brings to mind like images
Speaker 1: of like Thomas the tank engine or something you know.
Speaker 1: But and it's not completely unlike that. Uh. It would
Speaker 1: feature like headlights that would fade for bright too dole
Speaker 1: to indicate anger or contentment. Eyebrows formed by lighted slits
Speaker 1: along the car's bonnet that would be able to illuminate
Speaker 1: to form a frown. So you would have a vehicle
Speaker 1: that that's frowning on you. Are you picturing? Am I
Speaker 1: the only one picturing Herbie? Did Herbie have a face?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Herbie kind of has a face. Her
Speaker 1: being in a little VW Bug in the movies, I
Speaker 1: felt like you could emote. Maybe you just had more
Speaker 1: of a connection with that film than I did. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's basically the you know, the vehicle would
Speaker 1: um would would emote for the the the driver. And
Speaker 1: at the time I think they were they were saying
Speaker 1: that the technology was still like ten or fifteen years
Speaker 1: off or more, um, you know, before we would actually
Speaker 1: be able to see this. Uh, And of course we
Speaker 1: haven't seen it. So my complaint with that would be,
Speaker 1: I would I like to selectively emote? Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: like to emote every feeling or thought or sweaty palm
Speaker 1: that I'm feeling. Right well, yeah, And it's like if
Speaker 1: you're driving, if you're angry and you're driving like you
Speaker 1: don't want to again, you it seems unhealthy for everybody
Speaker 1: on the road to know that you're an angry driver.
Speaker 1: And it seems like when you if you, if you
Speaker 1: were to, you know, to roll out this technology, you know,
Speaker 1: say give it to everybody in Atlanta. I think you'd
Speaker 1: have like two types of drivers. You'd have like angry
Speaker 1: drivers and then the drivers that are jamming out listening
Speaker 1: to music. You know, so because I and I actually
Speaker 1: I saw another study that pointed out that like we're
Speaker 1: kind of like reard at this point to drive angry
Speaker 1: and have road rage. You know, we what do you
Speaker 1: mean because we have all this stuff to entertain us
Speaker 1: in the car or you know what we're it's like
Speaker 1: all the reasons we're talking about before about being shut off.
Speaker 1: But also like a lot of us grow up with
Speaker 1: with parents that are that are like, you know, your
Speaker 1: mom's driving the car, and she's probably talking about the traffic,
Speaker 1: you know, and complaining about the traffic and creating that
Speaker 1: little story in which her and her driving experience are
Speaker 1: the center of everything. Like a lot of people do.
Speaker 1: The the whole chatter while they're driving. I mean, have
Speaker 1: you ever been in a vehicle driving nobody else in
Speaker 1: the vehicle with you and you're you're talking, like you're
Speaker 1: commenting on the on the traffic a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: well do you talk to yourself in the car? Are
Speaker 1: you trying to get I didn't think about it, muntil
Speaker 1: I I saw it mentioned in one of these these studies,
Speaker 1: and they were like saying that people, that's one of
Speaker 1: the signs so that the driver, most drivers seemed to
Speaker 1: um to put out there. So they they chatter and
Speaker 1: they're like they're like, oh, what are you doing, buddy?
Speaker 1: You know you kind of talk to the other cars.
Speaker 1: You know, what are you doing? Guy? You totally cut
Speaker 1: me off there. It's like, oh, I guess you're not
Speaker 1: gonna make that like great, we all missed the lot,
Speaker 1: you know, things like that, um which occasionally, like if
Speaker 1: you've ever like done like me, I think it was
Speaker 1: like a month ago my phone I pocket called my sister. Well,
Speaker 1: if I guess, if you put your phone in your
Speaker 1: back pockets, a butt call more like a hip call
Speaker 1: for me, I guess. But but yeah, so I called
Speaker 1: her and I was just driving, so she got to
Speaker 1: listen to my my traffic chatter for like the length
Speaker 1: of the message. You know, so so, and there isn't
Speaker 1: a new gadget called the drive Motion and why don't
Speaker 1: you take us to this one because you're a little
Speaker 1: bit more familiar with Yeah, and this is It took
Speaker 1: me a want to figure out how to pronounce the
Speaker 1: name of the product, because it's drive Emotion, but with
Speaker 1: one word. And instead of instead of doing the double ease,
Speaker 1: they share any So it's d R I V E
Speaker 1: M O c I O n UM. And this you're
Speaker 1: talking about, you want to selectively emote when you're driving,
Speaker 1: and you don't want certainly you don't want like a
Speaker 1: supercomputer picking up on all your micro expressions and like
Speaker 1: letting everybody know that you're pretending to be happy but
Speaker 1: you're really frightened of the world. You know, that would
Speaker 1: be that would suck. But now this is basically a
Speaker 1: device that like sticks on the back of your your
Speaker 1: back windshield, you know, um, and it lights up and
Speaker 1: it has like five different things that can do. It
Speaker 1: can make a happy face, It can make a winky
Speaker 1: face or I don't know what you'd call it a face,
Speaker 1: a smiley face, that's winking. Um, is that maybe if
Speaker 1: you find the driver next to kind of cute I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: or that was kind of a cheeky move, Yeah, some
Speaker 1: sort of traffic flirting or something. I don't know. And
Speaker 1: then there's like the words back off, the words thanks,
Speaker 1: and the word sorry. So you know, very limited in
Speaker 1: what you can convey, but you have to wonder. It's
Speaker 1: like maybe this is enough to sort of make some difference,
Speaker 1: you know, to bring some humanity back into onto the roads. Right,
Speaker 1: So as long as we have instances of road rage
Speaker 1: and people you know, doing kind of terrible things to
Speaker 1: each other in traffic, maybe these emoticons in the car
Speaker 1: aren't such a bad thing. Yeah, maybe they should be standard.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I mean if you look at Dr Leon James,
Speaker 1: he was saying that fifty six percent of the men
Speaker 1: surveyed said the experience rage on a daily basis vers
Speaker 1: of the women. So either sex a lot of rage
Speaker 1: going on, and and rage has been I mean, not
Speaker 1: not necessarily rage, but like anger is one of the
Speaker 1: is frequently um um connected to traffic accidents and just
Speaker 1: general lack of stay down the roads. So right, so
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you, And what we would
Speaker 1: love to hear on this is do you guys have
Speaker 1: any sort of signs that you give to other drivers
Speaker 1: and and we don't want to hear no, make them
Speaker 1: all nice and g rated. Thank you very much. Um,
Speaker 1: you know do you have Yeah, because all the obscene
Speaker 1: ones are pretty obvious. There's only so many variations that
Speaker 1: you can not roll with on that. But how do
Speaker 1: you convey other emotions? Yeah? And how do you feel
Speaker 1: about emoticon Send us an email at science stuff at
Speaker 1: has stuff works dot com or connected with us on
Speaker 1: Facebook or stuff from the Science Lab or on Twitter
Speaker 1: or lab stuff Yeah, Wolf actually, or at least I
Speaker 1: will use emoticons on lap stuff and are in our
Speaker 1: Facebook account, Allison never That's all they got. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
Speaker 1: check at our blogs on the House of works dot
Speaker 1: com homepage.