Anatomy of an Expression

What does it take to make someone show genuine fear, disgust, joy, or surprise? In the 1920s, psychologist Carney Landis set out to answer that question with an experiment that would become infamous in the history of psychology.

This week, we explore the bizarre and ethically questionable Carney Landis facial expression experiment, where participants were subjected to increasingly uncomfortable situations—all in the name of science. What he found instead raised far more questions than answers.

And because questionable decisions made for great podcasting, we didn't stop at history. Inspired by Landis's research, we conducted a facial expression experiment of our own! No worries—we left the ethical violations in the 1920s. But the results were still revealing, hilarious, and occasionally hard to keep a straight face through.

Join us as we examine one of psychology's strangest studies, test a few theories ourselves, and discover that when it comes to reading emotions, the truth isn't always written all over your face.