pymetrics Faces Game: Emotions, Timing and How It Works

The pymetrics Faces game shows you a person's face, sometimes with a short story about their situation, and asks which emotion they are feeling. It is one of the 12 core pymetrics games, which Harver now runs as its gamified assessments after buying pymetrics in August 2022. Prep sites usually report Faces as the last game in the set.

Facts below are labelled official (pymetrics or Harver material, including pymetrics' patent), prep sites (commercial descriptions, some of them reconstructions) or not public.

The Faces game at a glance

	What is known	Source
Task	Name the emotion on a photo of a face; some come with a short story	Official (pymetrics patent)
Labels	Anger, determination, disgust, fear, happiness, hope, pain, sadness, surprise, puzzlement	Prep sites (the patent version had four options)
Number of faces	About 14	Prep sites
Time limits	About 7 seconds for a face alone, 30 seconds with a story	Prep sites, unverified
Scoring	Not published	Not public

What you see and do

Instructions. Read them in full; your version may differ from prep-site reports.
A face appears (official). The patent describes photographs of men and women, some shown alone.
Sometimes a story (official). Other faces come with a sentence or two about the person's situation. Prep sites warn that story and expression can disagree.
You choose an emotion (official; details from prep sites). You pick one label from a list. Whether all ten labels appear on every face is not public.
A counter and a timer (prep sites). A prep-site simulation shows a counter such as "3/14". No public source says whether the real game shows if you were right.

The psychology behind it: facial affect recognition

Faces is a facial affect recognition task, one of the oldest tools in emotion research. In a well-known study, Ekman and Friesen (1971) read short stories to the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, who had seen very little Western media, and asked them to pick the face that matched each story. Most expressions were matched well above chance, although fear and surprise were often confused.

The pymetrics version adds labels beyond the classic six, such as determination, hope and puzzlement, and it adds stories. That draws on research showing that context changes how we read a face. Carroll and Russell (1996) found that when the situation and the face pointed to different emotions, people often judged by the situation. Aviezer and colleagues (2008) showed that the same disgusted face could be read as angry or afraid depending on the body and setting around it.

What it is thought to measure

According to pymetrics' patent and prep sites, Faces looks at emotion recognition and at how you use context. Emotion is also one of the nine trait categories Harver lists. pymetrics does not publish which measures it takes from the game or how it weighs them.

Overall, pymetrics compares your play across all the games with people who do well in the role and gives the employer a fit score, not a pass mark (official). See pymetrics results and the trait report.

Is there a right answer?

pymetrics says there is "no right or wrong answer" in its games, and for the battery as a whole that holds: your profile is matched to roles, not marked. But each Faces item is meant to show a particular emotion, so accuracy can be measured (our inference; prep sites agree). How much it matters for a role is not public; see pymetrics games answers.

Timing and length

The whole set (official): about 25 minutes for the 12 games, 1 to 3 minutes each. You cannot pause a game once it starts, but you can take a break between games.
Faces (prep sites, unverified): about 14 faces, roughly 7 seconds for a face alone and 30 seconds with a story.

How to approach it

pymetrics' advice is to be yourself, and that suits Faces: read each person as you naturally would, with full attention.

Know the labels first. Read the list of emotions in the instructions so you are not hunting through it against the clock.
Story first, then face. If the two disagree, prep sites advise answering for how the person feels in that situation.
Look at the whole face. Brows, eyes and mouth together say more than one feature: an open mouth can mean surprise, fear or pain.
Decide, then move on. Going back and forth between two labels only uses up time.
Set up calmly. The games run in a browser or the mobile app (official); prep sites advise a computer. Allow 25 to 30 quiet minutes, and ask the employer early if you need an adjustment.

Common mistakes

Answering from the face alone when the story clearly points elsewhere.
Reading every smile as happiness: a polite smile can sit on a sad or worried person.
Mixing up close pairs: fear and surprise, anger and determination, hope and happiness.
Choosing the emotion you think an employer wants rather than the one you read.

A worked example

These two items are our own, described in words, not taken from the real game.

Face alone. The eyebrows are raised and pulled together, the upper eyelids are wide open and the lips are stretched sideways. Options: fear, surprise, puzzlement, hope. The intended answer is fear. Surprise also raises the brows, but without pulling them together, and it usually drops the jaw instead of stretching the lips.

Face with a story. "Sam opens a letter saying his flat application has been turned down for the third time. His flatmate is in the room, and Sam is smiling." Options: happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust. The face smiles, but the situation points to sadness, and prep sites advise answering for the person's state in the situation. The intended answer is sadness.

How Candidate Falcon's Faces practice works

Candidate Falcon's independent pymetrics Faces practice game lets you get used to the format. It is not the real game: pymetrics does not publish its photos, so we draw our own illustrated faces and write our own stories.

14 faces per run from a bank of 34: 7 alone, 5 with a story that agrees with the face and 2 with one that conflicts.
4 or 5 options from the ten reported labels, by tap, click or keys 1 to 5.
7 seconds alone and 30 seconds with a story; when time runs out, the face is left unanswered.
No feedback during the run, then a review of every face and the emotions you mixed up.

Practice results are not pymetrics or Harver scores. The pymetrics games come with every plan that includes Harver; see pricing. The free pymetrics guide covers the whole battery.

FAQs

How many faces are in the pymetrics Faces game?

pymetrics does not publish the count. Prep sites report a counter of about 14 faces.

Is the pymetrics Faces game timed?

Prep sites report about 7 seconds for a face alone and 30 seconds with a story. These figures are unverified, so follow your on-screen instructions.

What should I answer when the story and the face disagree?

Prep sites advise answering for how the person feels in that situation, which fits research showing that context shapes how people read faces.

Can I replay the Faces game?

pymetrics' End User Agreement (May 2019) allows each game once in any 12-month period and asks you not to stop a game halfway through. Check your invitation, as rules may have changed under Harver.

Sources

pymetrics patent WO2015200880A1: the faces task, stories, four options.
Wilson et al. (2021), Building and Auditing Fair Algorithms, with pymetrics co-authors: devices and the fit model.
pymetrics candidate FAQ, employer-hosted copy (2018): timing, no pausing, no right or wrong answer.
pymetrics End User Agreement (read October 2026): replays.
Harver: gamified assessments and Harver acquires pymetrics (read October 2026).
Prep-site descriptions (JobTestPrep, GraduatesFirst, The Interview Guys): labels, counter, timings, conflicting stories.
Ekman, P., and Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(2), 124–129.
Carroll, J. M., and Russell, J. A. (1996). Do facial expressions signal specific emotions? Judging emotion from the face in context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(2), 205–218.
Aviezer, H., et al. (2008). Angry, disgusted, or afraid? Studies on the malleability of emotion perception. Psychological Science, 19(7), 724–732.

Candidate Falcon is independent and not affiliated with pymetrics, Harver or any employer.