How to Analyze People's Facial Expressions
- 1). Look into a mirror and look at your own face. Attempt to express emotion through your face and study how your face contorts for each emotion you experience. For example, a happy or joyful expression will generally consist of a smile with raised corners of the lips, crinkled eyelids and crow’s feed around the eyes. Seeing your own facial expressions and emotions will help you to better recognize the facial expressions of others.
- 2). Study the facial expressions of others online. Certain websites, such as CIO and Your Amazing Brain, offer facial expression tests and quizzes that will show you a still picture of a person’s face and then have you determine what emotion that person is displaying. Taking such tests and quizzes can be good practice and help you get used to analyzing the facial expressions of other people.
- 3). Evaluate the facial expression of someone you interact with. Try to evaluate the person’s facial expression quickly as you can, as facial expressions are generally fleeting. Study areas of the face such as the person’s forehead, nostrils, eyes, lips and eyebrows, as many parts of the face will work together to form one expression or another. For example, a person who is angry may clench his jaw, his lips may curl and become thin, his eyes may narrow and his nostrils may flare.
- 4). Consider the situation at hand when evaluating facial expressions. Ask yourself if the facial expression of the person in front of you matches his mood. For example, if you just fired someone from his job and he has a smile on his face, that person is most likely smiling to cover up his emotions of disappointment or anger. Looking at his eyebrows or how tense his jaw is, however, can help you to see past the smile and determine the person’s real feelings. If the person’s expression lasts longer than a few seconds, that generally will mean that he is trying to fool you.
- 5). Reading facial expressions can only help you determine which emotions a person is feeling and not why he is feeling them. When it comes to emotions, you can only assume why a person feels a certain way. Don’t ever accuse someone of feeling a certain way. Instead, gently say something like “You say that you feel fine but your expression tells me otherwise. Are you sure you’re not upset?”
Source...