View Larger Version | Knowing that gelotophobes can’t hear the difference between good-natured and malicious laughter on recorded sound tracks, the University of Zurich’s Willibald Ruch and his colleagues are looking to see if gelotophobes also have problems reading facial expressions. Drawing from the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, who while at the University of California, San Francisco, designed a coding system to read and interpret subtle emotional cues from the face, Ruch and his colleagues have developed a series of photos showing wide toothy grins, warm genuine smiles and phony smiles to see how well gelotophobes can read such facial cues. Ruch expects the study to reveal more about how gelotophobes may misinterpret the intentions of humor. Credit: W. Ruch