The Curious Case of
SURPRISE
KEY CONCEPT: Surprise is a binary expression; there is only one way to pose surprise; unlike other facial expressions, surprise has no high or low intensity; surprise is just "on" or it is "off."
Figure 1: An authentic expression of surprise captured by French photographer, Robert Doisneau.
It’s hard to get too excited about the facial expression of Surprise. It has no mystery, subtlety, or complexity, and its occurrence elicits very little emotional response from the viewer; mild amusement, perhaps.
Surprise exists, it’s recognizable, and it’s easy to pose; that’s pretty much the whole story. Or, is it?
Surprise exists, it’s recognizable, and it’s easy to pose; that’s pretty much the whole story. Or, is it?
I’m personally puzzled by the fact that of all the Cardinal Expressions, the occurrence of Surprise is the rarest. I couldn’t live without my clip files of emotions, and I have hundreds of examples of anger, joy, sadness, fear, and disgust. Many of these pictures are taken under circumstances which seem perfectly adapted to produce the emotion in question – fights for anger, celebrations for joy, funerals for sadness.
Almost all the relatively scant pictures I have of surprise are without any context or explanation – just folks looking surprised and nothing more. It’s not at all clear that the poses are spontaneous, as opposed to being posed. Can we tell the difference? (I'm even a bit suspicious of the famous Doisneau photo that starts this blog - staged or real?) It’s my personal experience that most of the situations we think might elicit surprise – people jumping out at you in the dark on your birthday, an unexpected visitor, a sudden, remarkable news event – just aren’t timed right, or are at the right level of intensity, for the face to register a surprised response someone else might be poised to notice.
It’s also the nature of surprise that it comes and goes in a flash – if it lingers on the face, it loses its meaning. In fact, I’m not sure that most of us have seen real surprise, in real life, in a way that we might have remembered or registered. And yet there is clearly universal agreement on what the expression consists of, and if the pose is correct, 90%+ agreement is easy to obtain. Surprise is binary, and it has no levels of intensity – we are either surprised, or we are not, and there is only one right way for it to look.
Let’s forgo any further philosophical discussion as to the nature of the expression of Surprise, and look at some examples of its appearance, many of which are accompanied by group-sourced user tests.
THE APPEARANCE OF SURPRISE:
Almost all the relatively scant pictures I have of surprise are without any context or explanation – just folks looking surprised and nothing more. It’s not at all clear that the poses are spontaneous, as opposed to being posed. Can we tell the difference? (I'm even a bit suspicious of the famous Doisneau photo that starts this blog - staged or real?) It’s my personal experience that most of the situations we think might elicit surprise – people jumping out at you in the dark on your birthday, an unexpected visitor, a sudden, remarkable news event – just aren’t timed right, or are at the right level of intensity, for the face to register a surprised response someone else might be poised to notice.
It’s also the nature of surprise that it comes and goes in a flash – if it lingers on the face, it loses its meaning. In fact, I’m not sure that most of us have seen real surprise, in real life, in a way that we might have remembered or registered. And yet there is clearly universal agreement on what the expression consists of, and if the pose is correct, 90%+ agreement is easy to obtain. Surprise is binary, and it has no levels of intensity – we are either surprised, or we are not, and there is only one right way for it to look.
Let’s forgo any further philosophical discussion as to the nature of the expression of Surprise, and look at some examples of its appearance, many of which are accompanied by group-sourced user tests.
THE APPEARANCE OF SURPRISE:
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Figures 2 & 3 illustrate your basic 'Universal Expression of Surprise' in both a photograph and line drawing. The photographed woman is almost certainly posed and not “natural”, but that doesn’t seem to matter for the recognition of Surprise.
The key components of the expression of Surprise are:
The key components of the expression of Surprise are:
- The upper lids are raised to expose the entire iris, with a fractional amount of extra eye white above.
- The eyebrows are raised straight up, creating horizontal forehead folds.
- The mouth is slackly dropped open by the lowering of the mandible, creating a smooth oval shape with no sideways or oblique stretching.
SURPRISE VARIANTS:
Figure 4.
NEUTRAL BROW - In surprise, the eyebrows and eyebrow creases are the least important of the three components (brow, eyes, and mouth). Here I’ve used Photoshop to lower the brows and remove the brow creases, but the user score has hardly changed (from 98% to 92%) due to retaining the wide eyes and the opened, oval mouth. Unlike many, many other expressions, here the brows are not particularly important.
Figure 5.
EXTRA-WIDE EYES - Surprise is most easily confused with Fear. Here I’ve taken the face of Universal Surprise and raised the upper lids well above what would occur in life. The result is a jump by my user testers from 0% recognition of Fear in Figures 2 & 3 to a 22% fear response in Figure 4, simply based on the raised lids and exposed eye whites.
STRETCHED MOUTH - Surprise is the only cardinal expression where NO muscle is tensed around the mouth. It doesn’t take much sideways tension to replace the surprise component with that of fear. Here the strong sideways stretching of the mouth, combined with mild exposure of the lower teeth (never visible in surprise), give us a very strong 58% fear response.
UNSUCCESSFUL SURPRISED FACES (Stylized):
UNSUCCESSFUL SURPRISED FACES (Stylized):
 Figure 7. This emoticon seems to want to be seen as more surprised than frightened, but the mouth is far too stretched sideways to read properly. |  Figure 8. Another stylized face with too much sideways mouth stretching. The eyes and brows work well. The fear component is weak, but tested 16% with my group-sourced testers. |
SURPRISE! THE CUCKOLDED GOD:
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Figure 9: (Left) "Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan," painting by Diego Velázquez, 1630. Figure 10: (Top Right) The surprised god and cuckolded husband, Vulcan. Figure 11: (Bottom Right)) A shocked fellow blacksmith.
“Hey Vulcan – do you know your wife is cheating on you?” This epic depiction of domestic drama contains two terrific depictions of surprise. It’s also perfect for the occasion – the lame, old husband Vulcan learns that he is being cuckolded by the irresistible, young God, Mars (note the widened eyes) and a simple workman responds to the sudden appearance of the Sun God, Apollo (note the slackened jaw). What happens next in the story is even more surprising!
Look it up!
Look it up!
CREDITS: Figure 1: Detail of photo, " Romi's Shop Window, " by Robert Doisneau (1912-1994), a French photographer who worked in the streets of Paris as a champion of humanist photography and a pioneer of photojournalism; Figure 2: Line drawing of surprised man by author; Figure 3, Photo of "surprised" woman found here ; Figures 4, 5 & 6: Modified photo in Figure 3 by author; Figure 7: Emoticon illustration found here; Figure 8: Illustration of surprised man found here: Figures 9, 10 & 11: "Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan," full painting and 2 details by Diego Velázquez, 1630 in the Museo Nacional del Prado..
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