[ilitirit]

I'm interested in seeing if there's a physio/psycho/neurological differences between people who find her smile mysterious and people who don't, because to me, the only mysterious thing about her smile is that the media makes such a big deal of it.

[jerf]

I didn't get it either. Finally, this article at least explains the mystery, and now that I'm looking for it, I see the point. I still process it as a "small smile", though, where the ambiguity is moved into the representation of the emotion and not the visual processing. "Smile" is not an atomic face state, there are many gradations within it.

I suspect the people finding it "mysterious" are suffering from an aliasing error, basically, binning a complicated thing (the human face) into far too few bins.

[dstorrs]

>"Smile" is not an atomic face state, there are many > gradations within it.

You're not kidding! http://face.paulekman.com/default.aspx

Personally, I've never seen the Mona Lisa's smile as that complicated. Her mouth is smiling, her eyes are not. When you look at the bottom half of her face, you see a smile. When you look at the top half, you don't.