Computer programs that scan facial expressions have been used to detect whether people respond positively to commercials or whether hospital patients are in pain. Can they also read a CEO’s mind?

James Cicon thinks they can. A finance professor at University of Central Missouri, Cicon built software that analyzed video of the faces of Fortune 500 executives for signs of emotions like fear, anger, disgust, and surprise. The emotions, he found, correlated with profit margins, returns on assets, stock price moves, and other measures of performance at the associated companies.

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Dr. Cicon pointed to psychological research to explain why investors interpreted negative emotions as a sign of positive movement in share price. “Fear is widely recognized as a powerful motivator. Thus it is not surprising to find that a CEO who appears fearful under interrogation is perceived by the market as a CEO who will work harder to increase firm value,” said the paper, which was co-authored by Steve Ferris of the University of Central Missouri and Ali Akansu and Yanjia Sun of New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The research comes on the heels of widening interest in the field known as sentiment analysis. Companies that have developed emotion-recognition software are using it to gauge the attitude of shoppers as they walk into stores and market-research subjects as they watch advertisements. Apple Inc. in a 2014 patent application described a software system that could analyze and identify people’s moods based on variables including facial expression, perspiration, and tone of voice. The company recently acquired Emotient, a startup that makes software purporting to detect emotions in facial imagery

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