Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Wonder of Facial Expressions



I remember sitting down with 3 of my friends in a restaurant. We were having dinner and chatting as usual. At one moment, we were talking about something, which I couldn't remember what by now. But I remembered at one point, 2 of my friends were not saying anything but I knew at that exact moment what they were thinking. Just at that split second, I read their microexpressions and those spoke louder than words.

More often than not, our facial expression gives away things that we don't even realize. That's when we know someone is sad, happy, angry, etc without the need for the other party to verbalize their feeling. However, for people who are really experts in reading microexpressions, they could even detect lies.Through those brief and involuntary facial expressions, there are seven universal emotions such as disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and contempt. Supposedly, it is very difficult to hide microexpressions reactions which only lasts for 1/25 to 1/15 of a second, unless one is a psychopath. That is totally of different wavelength.

I must say I learn quite a lot watching a TV show called "Lie to Me" (I have embedded the trailer video in this blog post for your reference). It made me more aware of others' facial reactions. Though I don't really know how to read them, but still interesting to just observe that tiny changes.

Pay attention next time. Watch when people talk. You may pick up one or two things you have never seen before.


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