Everything you need to know about body language Part V: Facial expressions.

Our face expressions are a special trait that distinguishes us from other animals on Earth. They play a vital role in how we communicate, allowing us to express our emotions by moving the muscles in our face in different ways, each conveying a completely different meaning. It’s fascinating how we can convey our feelings just by just a twitch on our face muscles!

Why should we trust the face

Face expressions have been one of the most studied phenomena for awhile now. Dr Ekman went to remote tribes which are uninfluenced by developed civilizations and found out that their facial expressions are the same as our, making it universal. Take a look at babies, we didn’t teach them how to show sad or happy, they just … do it.

As a result of being popular, people has been studying it and be able to control their expressions. However, in our daily lives, people are too distracted by something else, making it easy on our sharp observing eyes.

Positive Sign

Head tilt: comfortable, receptive.

Eyes open up: aroused or surprised.

Raised eye browns (no squinting): happy, good news. If eyes are open as big and wide as possible: really good news.

Gazing when directly in front of each others: either like, curious or threatened. Watch out for other signs and background story to determine which is which.

The dominant, confident people look and gaze around freely, while the less confident one’s sight is limited. You often see this when people only look straight forward on the street instead of enjoying the scene around.

Nose flares: aroused.

Nose up: confident. Nose down: unconfident.

Negative Sign

Squinting eyes, furrowing head, jaw tightening: all signs of stress. A lot of it can be seen during a test.

Eyes constrict: negative feeling. This is hard to observe as it happens in a tenth of a second, but catching this expression could give you good intels.

Eye blocking, hand touch eyes, around the eyes briefly, delay opening eyelids, compress eye lids: all signs of negativity. You can understand this as this person doesn’t want to believe what’s happening.

Eye browns squint: Depends on how high it rises, from low to high, we can interpret as aggressive – annoyed, displeasure – defeated, weakness.

When gazing away during a conversation: disinterest or deception.

Downward gaze: Processing information, sentiment, emotion or submissiveness.

Blink rate increases: Nervous or aroused.

Disappearing lips: Stress.

Pursed lips: Disagreement

Sneer: Contempt

Rub tongue back and forth in the lips: trying to comfort themselves.

Lips biting, mouth touching, lip licking, biting stuff (example: fingernails) : distress, insecure.

Tongue jutting: get away with deception

Tips

Defying gravity movement has always been a sign of confident. Keep your chin up!

I recommend: What everyone is saying – Joe Navarro.