Can people actually tell the emotions from someone just by looking at their eyes like in books?
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Yes. It’s an aspect of social intelligence. There’s actually a test for it, called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, where you’re given black-and-white pictures of eyes with eyebrows and have to choose which one of the four complicated emotions is being displayed.
If you’re interested, the test is [here](https://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc_tests/) (click Eyes Test – Adults for the instructions and test file) and the scientific paper explaining it is [here](https://depts.washington.edu/uwcssc/sites/default/files/hw00/d40/uwcssc/sites/default/files/Mind%20in%20the%20Eyes%20Scale_0.pdf) (pdf file). According to the paper, the average score is ~26 correct out of 36 questions for both men and women. It’s kind of fun to take – I didn’t think I’d be able to tell anything when I first took it, but you really are able to identify more than you think.
EDIT: There’s also a version that’s entirely online [here](http://kgajos.eecs.harvard.edu/mite/#). I think that one will score you automatically at the end, but you also have to answer some age/gender/income questions before starting so that the computer can compare your score to similar people.
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