Robert FrombergEditor-in-Chief, HFMA
She is 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful, 2 percent angry, less than 1 percent neutral, and not at all surprised. Mona Lisa, that is. At least, those are the findings of Dutch researchers using emotion-recognition software on the famously inscrutable smile of the woman in da Vinci’s portrait.
I read this finding in a news report a few months ago and have been thinking about it ever since: 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful…where to begin with this? For one thing, we’d better hope our bosses can’t so easily ascertain what we’re feeling when we’re asked to trim another 10 percent from our expense budgets. Some feelings really need to remain private.
But if there is one question this finding begs more than any other, it’s this: Don’t some things transcend quantification? Wouldn’t we all like to think our emotions are so complex that they can’t be quantified? You say I’m 74 percent happy? Nonsense--I’m 76 percent happy!
Yet I can’t help but find that these seemingly silly research findings actually help me understand the Mona Lisa a little better. And it strikes me that healthcare finance is a great example of the need to apply analytical tools to things not so easily analyzed.
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