Steven Johnson posted an excerpt from his upcoming new book, describing human's remarkable ability to mind-read. In it, he takes a test in which he's presented a series of pictures of just people's eyes and is asked to select what emotion is being expressed. A comment on that post led to this test which I took and scored a 30 on.
Not suprisingly, all the ones I missed were of women. The emotions and thoughts of the fairer sex remain a mystery to me. I was especially disappointed to have misread the two women who were "interested" and "flirtatious."
This whole thread recalled an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell on just this very topic. And it also explains, perhaps, why so many interviewers know within moments of meeting a candidate whether or not they're going to hire them.