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Power Of The Face

So let's go into the next law of how we do that. And that is the power of the face. So humans are funny creatures. We love faces. We are coded. We are programmed from evolutionary standpoint standpoint to love faces. And the reason for this is because faces, facial cues tell us a lot about the emotions of the people were with. So we see faces everywhere, even without faces. We see faces and clouds. We see faces in the sides of rocks. We see faces in our toast. We see faces in our kit kat bars. Does anyone see that face? Look at that little face, right? And the bite of the kit kat bar. Someone had to really been eating their kitkat slowly to see that face. I eat like a cat's fast. So I don't know. You know, give me a break. I don't know how they saw it. Anyone get my joke. Give me a break. Okay. People see faces in bananas. I that one looks fake to me, but people see faces everywhere. And that is because our brain is programmed to see them. There's even oh yes, a three D pancake printer...

where you can get your face printed on your pancake because I don't eat my pancakes any other way. I don't know about you. And they actually have this three D printer that prints out these pictures. That's how much we love faces. And we love our own face because we like to see faces everywhere. Why is this? This all comes down to the science of what's called the micro expression. So the micro expression was discovered by dr paul Ekman. Dr paul Ekman is an amazing researcher who found that faces are actually universal, their innate and that across cultures, across religions and sects is when we feel intense emotions, we make very brief involuntary facial expressions to follow that emotion. And this surprise a lot of researchers in the community, for example, we used to think that babies were born, they looked at their mother or father's face and they mirrored them and that's how babies learn facial expressions. What dr paul Ekman found is actually our faces happened at the same time, no matter whether your mom or dad has made them can generally blind Children. Children who had been blind since birth, make the same facial expressions as seeing Children. That means that something in our DNA tells us to make certain faces to keep us safe. And so because of that, it helps us study these faces. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to teach you some of the facial expressions that most common most often come up in our digital assets. They're actually seven universal facial expressions. They've discovered I will not be teaching all seven today because not all of them come up in the digital world as much, but you're welcome to learn. All of them are website at Science of People dot com slash face, totally free. I have a tutorial of all of them, but today we're going to focus on the ones that come up in your digital environment. The first facial expression is contempt. Now, before I get into what contempt is, I want you to look at your list of ideal first impression words, Did you have words like authentic, respectful, loyal, trustworthy, genuine open minded. You do have did you put downwards like this? Because if you did, it's incredibly important that you understand the contempt micro expression because contempt is the antithesis of authentic respect, loyal, trustworthy, genuine open minded. So when people have contempt, which is kind of like a one sided mouth raise a little smirk, it is the opposite, it's hatred disdain pessimism, close mindedness. So if you want to make sure that you are trustworthy, open minded, you have to make sure that you do not have smirks in your profile. I cannot tell you how many times I see the little smirk on people's headshots on their dating profile, on their facebook page, When you have contempt in your facebook picture, on your profile picture, you're literally telling the world I don't want to meet you. That is a really hard first impression to overcome, and often times it happened accidentally. So contempt is a very simple one sided mouth raise, even if it's very slight, that is a contempt, contemptuous smirk. Now, the reason why this mark is so important, let me explain some science behind it. So when we see this mark, it is an extreme sign of disrespect. Doctor john Gottman is a marriage and family counselor up in Seattle. And he runs sort of a love lab. He does a lot of research on marriages and relationships and he ran one of the largest marriage experiments in history. He brought couples into his lab hundreds of couples and he tested them on everything. He could think of hair samples, blood samples, urine samples, personality tests, IQ tests, he interviewed them, their kids, their friends, their parents, he followed them and watch them and filmed them in his lab and a little bed and breakfast set up so he could watch their body language and how they interact. And then he followed these couples for 30 years, 30 years. He followed these couples. He wanted to know which couples get divorced and which couples would stay together At the end of the 30 years. He looked back over all this data And he found one pattern that the couples who showed contempt in their initial intake interview With 93.6% accuracy would get divorced within 30 years. That's A powerful statistic. I mean you don't see 93.6% accuracy and very many scientific experiments. Dr Gottman can watch silent videos of couples and tell you with 93.6% accuracy if that couple will get divorced within 30 years. So when you have contempt in any of your pictures and by the way, this might not even just be your pictures. This could be family pictures, This could be other colleagues, pictures on your website. This could be stock images that you use on your website. I have worked with companies where they are using stock images and someone in the images showing contempt. That actually changes people's first impression of that website because they automatically it shuts down. That trust those trust indicators minimize when you see the smirk we see contempt, celebrities who use contempt all the time. They kind of drive us crazy. They irritate us a little bit. We think of them as quite negative, right? Simon cowell's his personal brand is incredibly negative and he shows the contempt micro expression all the time. So when we see contempt, it sort of bothers us with us. When politicians use contempt, their approval ratings dropped, their approval ratings drop because it bothers us. We don't want a leader who is negative or has a pessimistic view of the world. So I really want you to make sure that you eradicate any kind of contempt from your pictures and go check up on your friends profile pictures to and tell them to eradicate it as well. The second micro expression is happiness. So if you had words on your ideal first impression column like positive, optimistic, warm engaging, authentic, charismatic words like that, this micro expression is very important for you. Here's why happiness is actually not a simple micro expression. Most of us think oh happiness that's easy Vanessa, I know how to show happiness, I just have to smile. However a smile is not a true indicator of happiness. The only true indicator of happiness is when the sides of our eyes, little side muscles on the sides of our eyes or upper cheeks are engaged. So those eye crinkles that we see when someone says they smile up into their eyes, That actually is the true indicator of happiness and only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles. So here, if you see on one side, on the left hand side we have Lacey Smiling with her full face you can see the smile reaches all the way up into her eyes. On the other side you see that the smile barely reaches up into her eyes but she's still technically smiling. Now we know this as humans, we know that that sort of fake smile is not real. However in so many profile pictures and staged photos, we're not smiling genuinely because we're having we're posing for a photo, we're trying to take good photo, maybe we're uncomfortable taking photos. And so a fake smile comes across in our photos because it doesn't reach all the way up into our eyes. So right now look at your assets, look at your photos and make sure that that smile is reaching all the way up to your eyes. One way that you can tell by the way if you hold your finger or your hand and cover the bottom half of your face. Look at your eyes and see if you can tell if you're still smiling, if you are covering the bottom half of your face with your hand and it doesn't look like you can see that smile in your eyes, that means your smile is not engaging those side cheek muscles. Now we pick up on this uh subconsciously people people know the difference in authentic or fake smile. For example, celebrities who have not Botox, their happiness muscles to smile with their full face. We love them. We think of them as girls next door, they are so approachable and warm and charismatic. We want to be friends with them, we want to watch them because they're showing us genuine authentic emotions. Whereas celebrities that don't use their entire face, they give us this sort of fake smile, they sort of bother us a little bit. We think of them as more negative as more rebellious. Maybe a little bit inauthentic when politicians have pictures that don't use their full smile, they also bother us quite a bit. So make sure that you're showing that authentic smile. Um Jeremy has a really good question about smiles when you apply for a role that requires leadership. Do you smile in the photo when you are a male? Very good question. So notice how in the last the happiness slide. I talked about warmth and authentic and charismatic, but I didn't say powerful, competent, strong. Now that doesn't mean that you can't have a smile and a warm, sorry in a competent or powerful photo, however many leaders will have a neutral face, they won't smile at all. So what I would say is if you want to show leadership ability either have an authentic smile so you show authentic happiness or have a calm neutral face. But don't try to meet in the middle. Don't try to have a half smile like a contempt smirk or half smile because no one wants a leader that's inauthentic. So it's either or and you absolutely can look powerful with a genuine smile. Most leaders don't. The research shows that leaders typically have less movement and less smiles but you can do it so I want you to do whatever feels authentic to you if that kind of answers your question. So let's talk about the third micro expression which is fear. So look at these words, take a look at yours and see if you see any similarities between your ideal first impression on this list. So if you put down confidence, powerful, competent, wise, dependable, strong in your photos, jeremy, this is important for you since you have some leadership questions. This micro expression is very important for you. Fear the universal micro expression that we all make when we're afraid of. Something happens when we raise our eyebrows and our eyelids up our foreheads so the whites of their eyes, the upper whites of our eyes are showing. Typically our mouth opens up so that we can take in oxygen. And I want to explain why where this comes from. So when you see, let's see that you're hiking in this beautiful hiking here in Portland Oregon. We're hiking and we see a snake on the trail. As soon as we see that snake, our brain kicks into survival mode and our brain goes, what do we need to do to keep us ourselves safe? So immediately our eyelids and our eyebrows jump out of the way so we can take in as much of the environment as possible. Then we open our mouths so we can take an oxygen in case we have to fight flight or yell for help. So all of these micro expressions happen for a reason. We are programmed to make them because they keep us safe. The problem is most of you are thinking, you know, how do I show fear in a digital asset? I see fear all the time with the whites of people's eyes and when you have the whites of your eyes showing in your photos, it shows anxiety and insecurity. It's the opposite of leadership. So you'll see photos like this where this is actually a real head shot on the left from twitter where she's actually flashing the whites of her eyes at you a little bit. She's smiling. Not a full smile, but actually that is a very insecure photo because we can slightly see the whites of her eyes. It the first impression that we get is low competence. We wouldn't think of her as a leader. Maybe sweet may be nice, but as a leader. No, because we see the whites of her eyes. So a couple other examples for you, right? We see people will smile with just the right there. I live up a little bit high. Those whites of your eyes are undermined leadership, competence and power. So if those are important for you, you want to make sure that you eradicate the upper whites of your eyes. This also happens in videos all the time. I watch Youtube videos all day long and especially I love ted talks. You will see people will flash the whites of their eyes when they forget their lines if they have stage fright. Sometimes, even when people are using a teleprompter, they have the whites of their eyes, the lids of their eyes open because they're afraid they're going to miss a line. So their brains are opening up their eyes as much as possible. But that comes across to us as nervousness. General camera nervousness can also cause someone to have the whites of their eyes showing be in fear mode while they're talking, you'd also be surprised, uncomfortable clothing, uncomfortable. Shoes can even translate into our face. For example, if your women who are wearing shoes that are uncomfortable or too tight for them will actually be standing at a networking event and as their toes pinch, the pain comes across their face, other people pick up on that pain from their face. Now they have no idea it's coming from shoes, but that comes across in their face. And then of course, whenever you're watching news interviews, difficult questions come up, you'll notice that someone is very anxious about a question. If they flash the whites of their eyes the interview or right before they answer, even politicians who have scripted answers will sometimes flash the whites of their eyes then launch into a scripted response. That's how you know that the reporter has just asked a trigger question is looking for that fear response. So a couple of challenges. This is in your, in your hand out again, signs people dot com slash digital. You try to eliminate fake smiles, fear eyes and smirks. You can actually circle any of these. If you have them on your on your page, you want to add genuine smiles, calm eyes and even smiles that both sides are even