How to Read Faces…Even When Everyone is Wearing a Mask

there are a couple of really annoying things about wearing a face mask first your lipstick always looks terrible second if you sneeze it's really really gross achoo oh oh third it's really really hard to read faces for those of you been following me at signs of people you know I am obsessed with micro expressions and body language and recently we're all wearing a lot more face masks so all of you my students my readers my viewers have been asking can you read facial expressions can you read body language even with a face mask and the good news is yes in this video I want to give you a tutorial of how you can read faces even beyond a face mask [Music] number one micro-expressions still at work so researcher dr. Paul Ekman his research is featured in the show lie to me which is one of my favorite shows of all time he is the one who discovered a micro expression a micro expression is a very brief involuntary facial expression we make when we feel an intense emotion we can't control these micro expressions they just happen and they usually happen in less than a second so there are quick flashes of emotion he discovered there are seven Universal facial expressions they are happiness contempt surprise fear disgust anger and sadness here's the good news these micro expressions for the most part take up lots of muscles on the face not just around the mouth or chin or lower cheeks they involve a lot around the upper cheeks the eyes and the forehead so even though we can't see the full micro expression we can see parts of it so let me do a little demo here so you can see so let's actually start with fear and surprise so fear and surprise have a lot of action in the eyebrows so if you are looking at someone with a face mask what you want to look for is any distinct movements in the eyebrows let's start with fear so fear when someone sees something they're afraid of they widened their eyelids so their eyelids get really white so you can see the whites of their eyes and their eyebrows usually raise up and they so I'm making the fear microexpression right now and you can see my eyes my eyelids are activated and my eyebrows are up surprise is a very similar micro expression but has a little bit less negativity to it you can be pleasantly surprised for example surprise is the longest micro expression in fact people typically open their mouths you might even see that face mask stretch you're also gonna see their eyebrows shoot up their face into upside down you so surprised looks like this so the biggest difference here is that was surprised you're looking for an elongation of the face and you're also looking for the eyebrows to become upside down use vs. fear where the eyelids open and the eyebrows have a flatline something like this so I want you to see the difference between surprise and fear here in this graphic as you can see surprise you have those upside-down use where fear you have a flat line across the eyebrows and even with a face mask we can still tell the difference all right next let's go into is sadness so sadness is the hardest microexpression to fake in fact for me to do it for you I have to practice a lot in the mirror so sadness you can try it with me now actually if you want to try sadness you could even underneath my face mask you can make your mouth into a little frown so right I don't like this so put your mouth into a little frown okay and then I want you to pinch the inner corners of your eyebrows together like this and then I want you to droop your lids that is the microexpression of sadness even though you can't see my face you can still see the sadness in my eyes again you're looking for a drooping lid and that pinch of the brow so even the graphics even we add a face mask you can still see that sadness in that characteristic little pinch it's very very hard to pinch your eyebrows together and droop your lids if you don't actually feel sad next microexpression is anger anger is another really easy one to spot even if you can't see someone's mouth the easiest way to spot anger is the two parallel lines I call them a railroad if you see a railroad right here between someone's eyebrows that is the quintessential micro expression of anger so typically when we're in anger we harden our lips which you can't see on our face mask and then we pinch our eyebrows so that we get those two vertical lines look like this we also might harden our lower lids so you can see that I actually get those two vertical lines right there that is the easiest way to spot anger you can even see it in the graphic can try this with me by the way if you pinch your eyebrows together and create those two vertical lines you will begin to feel a little irritable a little angry the next maker expression you want to look for is a positive one it's happiness so happiness is one of my favorite micro expressions and people most often mistake that happiness has to be a smile so when someone gives you a nice smile that means they're happy but you and I both know that anyone can fake smile right a fake smile looks like this a fake smile is we don't reach these upper cheek muscles or the upper sicom atticus muscles and so we can actually see this with a face mask in a way I think that happiness or true happiness is easier to spot with that with a with a mask on because you focus on the right part of the microexpression let me show you so if someone has a face mask on and they fake smile nothing really looks that different so right now I am fake smiling under this mask my face isn't look that different now I'm gonna real smile you notice how my face mask actually lifts it up and then you can see that these nice wrinkles here the crow's feet are engaged so watch the difference when I'm neutral fake smiling to real smiling so you see how the real smile actually activates the mask and even shows up above so the most important part of smile is actually right here I think in a weird way the face mask helps us focus on the right area okay the last two take this guy off I'm like sweating in my face mask oh the last two micro expressions are contempt and disgust so contempt and disgust are two very negative micro expressions briefly let's talk about disgust disgust is the expression you make when you smell something bad or you're grossed out it happens a lot in the mouth and nose so disgust without my mask on looks like this so I flashed the upper whites of my teeth and I crinkle my nose here's the good news is usually you can see those upper nose crinkles at the top of the mask so I show you that I'm disgust uh you can still see the nose crinkles in the camera so that's what you're looking for you're looking for those upper nose crinkles because you can't see my teeth but you can see that there's a lot of activation here and by the way no one does this naturally we only do this when we're actually grossed out all right the last micro expression is contempt okay I don't have good news folks contempt is the hardest one to spot under a face mask but I still think that you should know it so contempt is the simplest looking of the micro expressions but one of the most negative its scorn or disdain the feeling of being better than it is simply a one-sided mouth raise so just or it kind of looks like a smirk in fact we have a huge body language quiz on our website highly recommend if you want to test these yourself on these micro expressions check it out it's for free science and people.com slash quiz where you can test yourself on all the micro expressions in that quiz we ask people what this face means and it's the one that most people get wrong in fact most people think it's boredom or half happiness or apathy but actually contempt is an extremely negative emotion the problem is under a face mask you can't really see it I'm contempt and you can't really see it that makes me feel contemptuous so you have to look for other nonverbal signs of contempt and here a couple of my hair is like in my mask can you see it the other problem with wearing a face mask hold on it's a rope Oh got it got it so the other nonverbal signs are kind of contempt are also really good to know and I love teaching body language this is just an excuse for me to teach you some new body language cues some other contemptuous things you should know is a sarcastic tone of voice often the smirk often the smirk is partnered with a yeah tell me about it or I guess she's okay or I'm fine that expression you've heard it before it's often accompanied by passive aggressiveness as well so listen for that sarcastic tone of voice you might also see distancing behavior distancing the behavior it's when someone moves their body or angles their body back they tilt a shoulder back they tilt their head back and they look down their nose at you this is especially helpful especially when you someone's wearing a face mask you can immediately see when someone feels skeptical because they go like this right that's a universal gesture we tilt their head back we look down our nose at someone it's as if we're saying I don't know about you those are a couple things that you can look out for along with contempt to see if you're missing it underneath the facemask alright step number two here is this is actually not new science or a new approach on our website for the last five or six years we've been running a quiz called reading the mind in the eyes and this quiz is literally just being able to read emotions from and we have proven over and over again that people can accurately read emotions even when you can't see the bottom half of the face so I'm very encouraged by this research because I know that we can already do it here is my next big challenge for you maybe you took our first body language quiz that was seeing the whole face now I want you to take the reading the mais and then reading the mind in the eyes quiz this is just pictures of people's eyes including wearing glasses by the way which makes it even harder to different barriers a face mask and the eyes that's at science of people calm / eyes here are a couple of examples for you alright take a look at this pair of eyes what emotion do you think they feel how about this face what emotion do you think they feel be sure to go take the full reading the mind in the eyes quiz at science people calm / eyes alright number three body language matters more than ever especially if you're doing more video calls and you're seeing more body language if you can't rely completely on the face you have to look at body language cues I have dozens and dozens of articles about body language I also have a ton of info about body language in our course people school but I want to give you a couple of quick tips here as with a couple of recommendations of what you can watch next first the universal sign for shame and you can see this even with a face mask on so if I have my face mask on the universal sign for shame is touching just the side of the forehead either side so when someone is embarrassed or they make a mistake they'll often go and that is because universally when we touch this part of our forehead or it's as if we're trying to shield or cover our eyes because we feel embarrassed you can also look out for anything with this gesture is that someone feels a little embarrassed or ashamed second thing for you to consider is the head tilt this is a positive cue if you're wondering is this person like me are they paying attention you're not sure if they're smiling one thing you can look for is the head tilt so as humans we want to hear something better we tilt our head to expose our ears so we can hear more and so if someone is listening in there mm-hmm you know that they actually are listening because they're tilting that ear up and even with a face mask on you can still see it is also sometimes is accompanied by an odd mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm nods are also a very positive cue there's one more body language cue I want to teach you because it has to do with the face especially if you're on video calls which is hi squinting let's remember how we learned anger so anger the full micro expressions like this right so we have these two vertical lines that appear sometimes in anger you also will get a hardening of the lids kind of like a squinting when we're skeptical of something or we're judging something we're not sure if it's true we squint our eyes as if to see better you can very clearly see this even under our facemask so if I you can immediately see that I feel skeptical so you can also watch for that Harting of the lower lid to see if someone is feeling a little bit skeptical of what you're saying the bottom line here is body language micro expressions they're more important than ever I think that reading nonverbal is a social superpower and I my goal is to teach it to everyone so start with these seven micro expressions look at the eye behavior look at some body language take our body language quiz science at people.com / quiz or our reading the minds and the eyes quiz to really test yourself at science TV will calm / eyes hey I want to tell you one more thing you are amazing the question is do you know how to share it I'd love to help I saved my very best tips for my insider subscribers subscribe for free at science abuse I know your inbox is sacred so I promise to send you only emails you will love if you like me wearing a face mask click like if you don't like me wearing a face mask click like

Channel: Vanessa Van Edwards

Views: 30,780

Rating: 4.9224973 out of 5

Keywords: vanessa van edwards, science of people, communication, nonverbal communication, verbal communication, coronavirus, corona, corona virus, infection, medical supplies, PPE, face mask

Id: TVkrmWkDIxA

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020