Element of Body language: Face

We have pretty much known about facial expressions are universal, from the post 'Facial Expressions Are Universal'. Therefore, face is one of key elements of body language commonly shared by you, me and everyone else. The following article is written by Kevin Hogan explaining some of the features and applications displayed by your face.

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Many experts consider facial expressions the most important non-verbal behaviour of all. Your face is the focal point of conversation and interaction, so the impact of its movements and expressions is magnified. The face is a tool for communicating emotions and feelings, but it is important for regulating and regulating and directing an interaction.

Let's say you are interacting with another person is already talking, your facial expression will change to indicate you want a turn. Your eyebrows rise slightly and your mouth opens as if you are about to speak. Smiling is a facial expression used when listening to someone else as a way of encouraging them, acknowledging what they are saying, and signalling you are interested in what they are saying.

Facial expressions can communicate nearly any emotion you want, the most common being happiness, fear, disgust, anger, sadness and surprise. They are typically appear as follows:

• Happiness – Lips pull back and up at the corners; cheeks raise up; so called crow's feet wrinkles become noticeable on the outside of the eyes.

• Fear – Mouth opens slightly; lips are tense; eyebrows rise up and together; forehead wrinkles in the centre; upper eyelid rises up.

• Disgust – Nose wrinkles up; cheeks raise up; eyebrows lower; upper lip rises up; lower lip may be raised up against the upper lip or lowered slightly and pushed out.

• Anger – Eyes stare with contracted pupils, perhaps seeming to bulge out; eyebrows lower, coming together and creating wrinkles between them; lips may be tense and pressed together or tense and open.

• Sadness – Lips draw down in the corners, perhaps trembling; eyebrows rise up slightly; upper eyelid rises up in the inner corner.

• Surprise – Eyelids open wide; eyebrows arch up; wrinkles appear across entire forehead; jaw drops and mouth opens.

Your face is a useful flirtion device. (It's like a floatation device on an airplane... okay, maybe not.)

A smile, a wink, and raised eyebrows in the right social situation can attract another person's attention and communicate interest. Once a conversation is started, these same facial expressions help to encourage further interest and interaction. The power of facial expressions for attracting and engaging someone else is so big that it can become a misused tool for manipulating or otherwise influencing another person.

There are cultural differences in how facial body language is interpreted as well. For instance, Americans tend to read more emotion into the face than do Japanese. Americans put their focus on the mouth when trying to understand what someone is saying. The Japanese put their attention on the eyes.

People from the same culture are more accurate in reading each other's 'facial expressions, a finding you would expect, of course.

Facial expression can be either deliberate or spontaneous depending on the person and the situation. Children tend to show their facial expressions spontaneously, with little or no deliberate control. Adults, on the other hand, have learned through the years to mask or control certain facial expressions in certain situations where they are considered inappropriate or unwise.

Can you identify the facial expressions in the picture below? 

 

Answers

Top Left: Anger
Top Right: Fear
Middle Left: Digust
Middle Right: Surprise
Bottom Left: Happiness
Bottom Right: Sadness

Other books by Kevin Hogan

     

Hand Gestures

From previous posts, we know that gestures can be vary across different cultures. If you think you can read people's gestures in a country different than yours. Well, think again!

Here is a short video with subtitles demonstrating various hand gestures, many with multiple meanings.

Titles related to hand gestures

     

A Little Tip: Want People to Feel as if You are Both on the Same Wavelength

Allow yourself to become infected by their emotional output.

In other words, if you see them excited because the home team scored a goal, make sure you get up in that excitement as well, make sure they see that.

If your counterpart is angry, allow your face to come close to matching his emotional intensity.

These kind of near matches really build empathy and liking between two people or groups of people.

However, don't match the exact level of excitement or anger. This can often backfire as being seen as  dramatic not genuine and overall bad idea.

Books about anger management

     

Facial Expressions Are Universal

Humans have evolved certain facial expressions that are so universal that all but the least perspective individuals can recognise them.' This is quoted from a book 'The Body Language Handbook: How To Read Everyone's Hidden Thoughts And Intentions' written by Gregory Hartley and Maryann Karinch. In the book, it mentioned that each universal expression has degrees and the differences characteristics combine with slightly different mental states to cause variations.

This is why certain expressions fall into the category of “universal” is based on research with diverse populations. The most well-known researches were conducted by Paul Ekman of the Human Interaction Laboratory at University of California's School of Medicine supported the observation that certain facial expressions are universal. The common expressions included in his work “Facial Expressions and Emotion: An Controversy and New Findings” are disgust, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and enjoyment (or happiness). Later, he added in contempt, pride, uncertainty and embarrassment. People try to mask them, but they still come out. As humans, we have a natural ability to interpret that base body language. Whether the constrained body language is a personal choice or cultural is a tough call by looking at one person. Biology and bone structure often play as big part as culture.

Bodies adapt to what we do. A long-distance runner who decides to take up weight training and become a competitive bodybuilder has to make adjustments in the way muscles are used – to recondition them the way you would tune a piano. When the wires become accustomed to holding one shape, the piano tuner has a big job: He has to come back repeatedly to condition the wires to stay in tune. The same thing happens with your face. Muscle memory kicks in and dictates how you use it, and shows all the world how you have used it in the past.

Of all the facial expression listed – disgust, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, happiness, contempt and pride – can you recall any of them?

Try look at these photos. What do you see in common?

All three of the photos have a clear, external focus, raised chin and set mouth that suggests pride. A look of pride can be associated with both positive and negative situations, but the emotion is the same. When a police officer confronts a gang member in front of his buddies, the gang member will stand indignantly, raise his head, and flash pride. It maybe just be the pride of “I got your attention.” But in the photo on the right, the kid is showing pride after doing something his parents are proud of. Both are pride rooted in accomplishment and acknowledgement.

Even someone who knows you well and feels comfortable with you will occasionally show some of the same signs of uncertainty that a stranger, or someone unfamiliar with your culture, will show. You can surprise him or her with a request or ask for her opinion on a topic that causes anxiety.

For example, you were asked to participate in a lucky draw contest by an unknown event representative while walking in the shopping mall. Obviously, you would have no idea of what the contest was all about. You would most likely to give a look of uncertainty. While she explained the process to you, you could probably be interpreting what she said and trying to organise the information so that you could be ready to participate.

With some emotions, you don't even need the whole face. The eyes say it all. It's all part of why for generations we have been quoting the proverb “the eyes are the windows to the soul.”

Other titles related to Facial Expressions

   

Interesting Facts: Blocking Out Information

Two groups of volunteers were asked to participate in an American research project in which the participants attended a series of lectures. The purpose of the project was to examine the effects of the crossed-arm position on retention of information and attitude toward the lecturer. The first group was instructed to sit in a casual, relaxed position, with their arms and legs in an open position. The second group was told to fold their arms tightly across their chests during the lectures. The study showed that the group with the folded arms had a more negative view of both the lectures and the lecturer and retained 38 per cent less information than the group that sat with their arms and legs uncrossed.

 "Nope, I am not giving away any anything"

  

Dressed to Distract

A few days ago, I happened to come across the following article written by Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1999. This article explains how a person's appearance can be making a difference to his or her life.

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It's hard to feel sorry for a woman who frets about being too beautiful.

Ordinarily in life, extraordinary good looks are an advantage for men and women – and even babies. Not only do babies gaze more longer at more comely adult faces, research tells us, but  parents may gaze longer at more comely babies.

So it was unusal when a knockout in New York, Ms Debrahlee Lorenzana, a 33-year-old single mother, filed a suit against Citigroup, claiming that she was fired in August from the Citibank branch at the Chrysler Centre for looking too sexy.

“Plaintiff was advised that as a result of the shape of her figure,” her lawsuit reads, “such clothes were purportedly 'too distracting' for her male colleagues and supervisor to bear”.

The media have had a field day. Last week's Village Voice cover profile of Ms Lorenzana – who grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to New York when she was 21 – raved about the bank officer's charms: “At five-foot-six and 125 pounds, (167cm and 57kg) with soft eyes and flawless bronze skin, she is J Locurves meets Jessica Simpson rack meets Audrey Hepburn elegance.”

Television and tabloids ran pictures, taken by photographer who works with her lawyer, showing Ms Lorenzana in the pencil skirts, turtlenecks, tailored jackets and stilettos that she says made her bosses at the bank concentrate on the wrong kind of figures.

“She has to manage her wardrobe so these men can manage their libidos?” said her lawyer Jack Tuckner, adding that her bosses acted as immaturely as the boys on Wayne's World.

As she prepared to appear on the Monday morning shows, Mr Lorenzana recalled that her supervisors obsessed over what she was wearing “saying things are too tight, you cannot wear turtlenecks. Well, guess what? When you say my pants are too tight when they are not, then you must have been staring at me.

“The reality is, I'm a size 32 DD. I'm very skinny, and then I have curves. So, of course, on my body, the turtleneck is going to make it more noticeable. But I'm not showing cleavage. We wear jackets.”

She said a co-worker who shopped with her and bought the same styles and designer brands never got I trouble, and neither did some tellers who wore low-cut tops, snug pants and hot boots.

“I said: You are discriminating against me because of my body type,” she said with a slight accent and breathy voice. “This is genetic. What am I supposed to do?”

Citigroup didn't return calls for commment on Friday. MS Lorenzana's lawsuit says that her bosses told her that her bosses told her that her female colleagues could wear what they liked because their “general unattractiveness rendered moot their sartorial choices”.

Her well-tailored clothes, on the other hand, emphasised what her lawyer calls her “hour-glass figure”.

An Opposite Reaction

This case has caused such fascination because usually it's the other way around.

Attractive professors get better evaluations from their students, according to one study. A 2005 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis confirmed what seems apparent, from presidential races to executive boardrooms: Good-looking people and tall people get a “beauty premium” an – extra 5 percent an hour – while there is a “plainness penalty” of 9 percent in wages.

A study that looked at men's height as teenagers and their salaries later found they made US$789 more a year for every extra inch of height. Meanwhile, obese women tend to get substantially lower wages than women of average weight.

Although people laugh at the idea of a babe in the office being as maddening as Tantalus' out-of-reach fruit, women do get penalised this way sometimes.

A male friend once told me he was looking for an unattractive personal assistant so he wouldn't be tempted. And when I was hiring a Grace Kelly blonde as a researcher a few years ago, a male colleague asked me not to because it would be "too distracting" to him; two girlfriends cautioned me not to because it would be depressing - and therefore, distracting - for me to work with someone so good looking. (It wasn't.)

"Sometimes, honestly, I wish I didn't look the way I did," Ms Lorenzana says, "because people judge you right away. Other women have their guards up, they automatically categorise you as being conceited. I have to work three times as hard to prove that I earned this through my hard work.

"My life has been hard my entire life. People have this misconception that, 'Oh, you do well in your life because of your looks.' No, I am harassed." 

New York Times

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Book by Maureen Dowd

Also find titles about appearance

     

Some Add-Ons for Non-verbal Communications

In the previous post, we mentioned about there are many parts of your body that add to the non-verbal message. This type of non-verbal communication is called kinesic code. It is made up of emblems, illustrators, regulators, affect displays and adapters. These behaviours are each communicated in different behaviours and movements of your body.

Posture

The first important aspect of kinesics is posture. Standing or sitting in a relaxed professional manner is a positive posture non-verbal. Also, being comfortably upright, squarely facing an audience, and evenly distributing your weight are all aspects of posture that communicate professionalism, confidence, attention to detail and organization.

Gesture

Non-verbal communicated by moving the trunk of your body are called body gestures. Several different body gesture strategies are to move to change mood or pace, draw attention, or reinforce and idea. Some examples are stepping aside for a transition or stepping forward to emphasize a point.

Hand gestures are what are most often identified as non-verbal communication. One reason is because they are so obvious to a receiver and seen to be partly conscious. It is important to let your gestures flow naturally as if in conversation with a close friend. You may also use gestures to specifically describe shape and size, emphasize a point, enumerate a list, or picking out a specific item.

Haptics

In conjunction with hand gestures is touching or a more scientific term known as haptics. This is a very powerful communicator especially for establishing a link to a receiver or conveying emotion. However, touching is dangerous because it invades a persons intimate space and may be perceived as unwanted or breaking norms. It is important to pay attention to the other person’s non-verbal cues before deciding to initiate a touch.

Facial Expression

Another area of physical non-verbal communication is facial expression. Facial expression is partly innate and also partly learned. Because of the number of muscles and features, such as mouth, nose, lips, cheeks, in your face, it is extremely expressive. A face can ask questions, show doubt, surprise, sadness, happiness and a wealth of other messages.

Proxemics

Proxemics is the amount of space around or between us and others. How closely people position themselves to a person during a discussion communicates what type of relationship exists between the two people. This space and meaning differs from culture to culture but in American culture the following standards exist.

• 0-18 inches is intimate space reserved for family and close friends

• 18 inches to 4 feet is personal space used in most interpersonal interactions

• 4-12 feet is social-consultative space used in more formal interactions

Appearance

Appearance is a relatively important factor involved with nonverbal communication. In today’s society, the purpose of clothing has changed from fulfilling a need to expressing oneself. Teens use fashion to determine cliques such as prep, jock, punk, or gangster. Clothing communication is continued later in life by identifying someone in a suit as a businessperson, someone wearing a black robe as a judge, doctors wearing lab coats and stethoscopes or various other positions wearing required uniforms of dress. Adornments are another form of appearance. Wearing expensive jewelery communicates one message while wearing ceremonial ornaments communicates a completely different message. Appearance also takes into account personal grooming such as cleanliness, doing one’s hair, nail trimming or wearing make-up. Overall appearance is the non-verbal that people are most aware of and manipulate the most. Appearance communicates how we feel and how we want to be viewed.

Eye Gaze

Many sayings hold that the eye is the window to the mind. This is very true to illustrating the power of eye contact in non-verbal communication. Eye contact can maintain, yield, deny and request communication between people. People who use eye contact are viewed as confident, credible and having nothing to hide.

Some important do’s and do not’s of eye contact are:

• If you have trouble staring someone in the eye, simply focus at something on their face

• When speaking to a group look at everyone

• Look at people who are key decision makers or hold power

• Look at reactive listeners

• Don’t look at the floor, scripts or anything that causes you to tilt your head away form the receiver

• Don’t look at bad listeners that may distract you

Hope you guys picked up a bit more about non-verbal communications. Want to know more about them , you can actually read more on some references such as the followings.