Read My Face! Understanding Facial Expressions (2024)

Read My Face! Understanding Facial Expressions

by Becky L. Spivey, M.Ed.

Facial expressions make up the universal language of emotion. With facial expressions alone, weinstantly convey happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Reading and interpretingfacial expressions is essential to understanding emotions and the social cues of others and, inunderstanding, we are able to show compassion and empathy. When a child or adult has troublepicking up on facial expressions, he/she may misjudge people’s meanings and moods. Here is someinteresting information to help children and adults read and interpret these important social cues.The major emotions include:

Happiness – We express true happiness with a genuine smile called a duch*enne smile.All smiles involve a major facial muscle pulling the lip corners up, but a genuine smilehappens around the eyes. Two facial muscle movements not only curl the lip corners up,but they tighten and make wrinkles around the sides of the eyes, creating pouches justbelow the lower eyelids. When you see lip corners up and wrinkles around the eyes, theperson is feeling genuine happiness.

The tell-tale signs of amusem*nt are the open mouth and the backwards head movement. And like agenuine smile, you can tell a genuine laugh when you see the muscles contracting around the eyes,making crow’s feet. Genuine laughter often relaxes all muscle movements in the body because ofshifts in our respiration patterns that happen when we laugh. This rapid shift to a state of relaxationshuts off feelings of aggression or frustration.

When we feel love, our facial expression often resembles happiness; a major muscle pulls the lipcorners up, and there’s a tightening of the lower eyelid. But the distinct expression of love combinesthese muscle movements with a tilt of the head to the side. The tilt is a sign of intimacy andconnection beyond simple happiness.

Sadness - When we are sad, our eyebrows slant slightly or flatten. Facial muscles pullthe eyebrows in, but the inner part of the muscle pulls them up. There’s also a littlepouching in the inner part of the forehead, and we will often look down. Plus, thecorners of the lips pull straight down, giving the mouth an upside-down, curved look.

Sometimes we may confuse shame with sadness; but shame doesn’t involve the muscle movements ofthe sad face. Shame is a very simple expression, but a powerful one. Shame involves a gaze aversion,with the head moving down so that the chin tucks into the neck. You’ll see this particular expressionespecially when people are experiencing psychological pain, such as when they see other peoplesuffer. It’s an expression closely related to sadness; but, rather than suffering in their own sadness,they experience the pain and suffering of others through empathy.

Fear – We express fear when we feel physically or psychologically threatened. Whenwe’re afraid, our jaw drops, our eyes open wide, and our mouth hangs open and may pullsideways. Our eyebrows are relatively flat when we’re afraid; they arch more when we’resurprised. At times, we might misinterpret the facial expression of fear with surprise.

Anger – We express anger when we feel aggressive, threatened, or frustrated by tighteningthe muscle movements around our lips, eyes, and in the brow. Some researchers think wemake this expression when we’re angry because it could protect the face in the event ofa physical conflict—for example, furrowed (tightened) eyebrows could protect the eyes.People sometimes confuse the look of anger with disgust, but disgust involves raising theupper lip and wrinkling the nose.

Embarrassment – We express embarrassment when we feel self-consciousor awkward in front of other people. We avoid eye contact with others,move the head down and to the side, and even make a little smile –exposing the neck. However, the embarrassed smile is different from othersmiles. The lips press together tightly to restrain self-control and shyness.Embarrassment sometimes looks like shame, but when we’re ashamed, ourhead moves straight down, not to the side, and we don’t smile. With about30 percent of embarrassment episodes, people touch their face. Some experts believe that touchingthe face is a defensive movement to protect the face after the person violated some social rule.

Pride – We show pride when we are happy with ourselves and feel power, dominance,or supremacy over others because of our accomplishments. The corners of our lips riseslightly, signaling that we are happy. What distinguishes pride from happiness is that thehead tilts back with a slight jaw-thrust, and even crossing of the arms in front of the chest– classic signs of power and dominance that suggest that we’re feeling strong and goodabout ourselves. Shame is the opposite of pride. Shame often constricts our posture, andwe drop our jaw as a sign of submissiveness.

Surprise – We exude an emotion of surprise upon a completely unexpected event.Experts believe our eyes open wider when surprised in order to absorb as much of thisnew information as possible (e.g., seeing a long-lost friend, receiving an unexpectedaward, etc.). Our upper eyelids rise up, our eyebrows arch, and our jaw drops.Sometimes, we might confuse surprise with fear; but when we’re afraid, our lowereyelids tighten, our eyebrows look flat and tense, and our lip corners go sidewaysmaking the mouth look tighter.

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