Microaggressions: Decoding The Face
Lesson 4 from: FAST CLASS: The Power of Body LanguageVanessa Van Edwards
Microaggressions: Decoding The Face
Lesson 4 from: FAST CLASS: The Power of Body LanguageVanessa Van Edwards
Lessons
Body Language Quiz & First Impressions
09:54 2Elevator Pitch Clinic
02:41 3How Body Language Changes Perception
07:35 4Microaggressions: Decoding The Face
10:09 5Microexpressions Continued
05:53 6How Your Body Reacts
05:14 7Power Body Language
08:06 8Perfect Elevator Pitch
16:29Lesson Info
Microaggressions: Decoding The Face
This is my 5th law of body language. So if you want to go to the laws of body language chart Number five is the law of intuition. So this is that we have a natural ability to read non verbal. We just have to hone it. So we know instinctively who is successful just based on their picture. We just have to know how to hone that for ourselves. And also when we're reading other people's faces, let's talk about the micro expression. The micro expression is the basis, it's the foundation of understanding the face. A micro expression is a very brief involuntary facial expression. It's what we make when we feel an intense emotion. The reason why micro expressions are so important is because they are involuntary. There are also universal. So dr paul Ekman, the reason he discovered facial expressions as he looked at tribes in Papua new guinea. So he went to Papua new guinea and he found a very, very remote tribe. They had never seen television before. They had never been exposed to anyone outside...
their tribe. What he wanted to know was even if these people have never seen faces outside their tribe, do they make the same facial expressions? So he showed them pictures of americans making different facial expressions and he had them look at the faces and with a translator they were able to name correctly the emotions they saw in the facial expressions even though they had never seen an american face before. They were able to say oh that's anger, that sadness, that's fear. This is a revolutionary concept because we once believed that babies were born looked at their mom or dad's face and then copied it. That's what we thought facial expressions come from. So he did what he said. Okay, so maybe these facial questions universal. Are they learned like that? Do we learn them somehow by mimicking? He looked at could generally blind Children. So Children who have been blind since birth, even though those Children have never seen a face before, they also make the same facial expressions as their parents as everyone else. So that's how we know these facial expressions are actually genetically coded in us. So the first expression is fear. Fear is when we raise our eyebrows up our forehead and then we raise our lids up to the whites of our eyes show and we typically pull our mouth back. Let me explain the reason why we do this, why I think it's genetically coded that we make this face more afraid. So think about running. What's something, what's what's something you're afraid of with something? What's a fear that you're afraid of skydiving, skydiving. Ok? So if you're at the top of a plane right, you're about to jump out and your adrenaline is pumping your brain wants to take in as much of the scene as possible to get a bearing in their surroundings. So your eyebrows get out of the way your eyelids get out of the way so you can see as much as possible, right? And then your mouth opens so that you can go into fight or flight. You also want to take an oxygen if you're afraid. So this expression, right? When you open your mouth like that, it forces you to take an oxygen. Because if you're in a fearful place, you have to be able to take an oxygen to know that if you have to go into that fight, we have to go into the flight mode. So from an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense. It actually keeps us alive. Were able to see any threat if you are hiking and you see a snake on the trail, your eyes instantly wide. And are there other snakes and then you take an oxygen because you know that you have to either run or try to fight. I don't know how you find a snake. I wouldn't recommend that. Um Hopefully you would run. Um I'm gonna do the face for you now. So you can see how it works live and in person. So you raise your eyebrows up your forehead, you widen your eyelids and you pull your mouth open and out right? That's how fear looks and I see it good. So what I want you to do is I asked you all to take out your smartphone's, everyone have a smartphone and at home what I want you to do is turn on your webcam or you can also use a smartphone or you can get a mirror, whatever you want. If you could open the camera app for me please. What I'm gonna have you do is make this face yourself and take a snapshot of when you feel like you've hit it. If you're having trouble hitting it, you can't quite get those eyebrows up there. Think about something that makes you really afraid. That makes it a lot easier to raise those eyebrows up because your body begins to go into that fight or flight. Don't do it for too long. I don't want you to be afraid of me, but that will help get you into it. Okay? So let's is any questions on that fear? Are we good? All right. So we're gonna go onto expression number two anger. This is one you don't want to see on client's faces. Let me tell you anger is when we pull our eyebrows down our forehead so they're furrowed into that. You see those vertical lines between our forehead uh in the middle of our forehead, pull our eyebrows down. Usually our eyes kind of glare or bulge. They come out and typically press our mouth into a hard line or we open it to yell. Um An interesting little Q. Here is that people will often chin jut when they feel angry. So if you're ever in a bar and you see two men fighting. I always know when a bar fight is about to happen because they'll look at each other and they go, yeah yeah and they just their chin out. It's a territorial behavior. We do this more angry to say this is my space. You know leave it. You'll see gorillas make this space as well and they even add on the fist bumping to the chest. We don't do that as humans anymore usually. Um But people do that's part of the body language with anger. Happiness. We have a good one. This is a really good one to practice. So there was a fascinating study that looked at the power of happiness and what they did was they had people put pencils in their mouth. Oh yeah I could do it to show why not. Thank you brian. All right. Everyone got one. So what they did is they had people put pencils in their mouth and you don't let your lips touch. That's hard top. Right? Okay so to stay like that. Okay so the reason that they had them do this is because the only true indicator of happiness is when the upper cheek muscles are engaged. The only way only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles. You should start giggling soon. I'm seeing it. Very good. Um That is because this is the way that you consciously activate those cheek muscles. All right good. Okay perfect. You can take them out back at home. You can try this. I feel so good. I know it's great. Um Like uh it's like a it's like the adult pacifier, those of you at home who need a little boost. This is what you can use. Um So what they looked at is the only true indicator of happiness is actually not the smile. It's when these upper cheek, the site of the eye muscles are activated and lifted up, right that Up for lifting motion. Only one in 10 people can consciously activate those muscles. So doing the pencil exercise at home because you're not sharing your pen, you're welcome to put in your mouth. You can feel those activate. They had people in the lab put the pencil in their mouth and rate cartoons. They had them rate different cartoons. They had other people, rate them with a furrowed brow, that anger brow that we learned. They pulled their eyebrows down and they had those lines and they had them rate cartoons. Can you guess who raided the cartoons as funnier three times, funnier? People who had the pencils in their mouth because their brain was telling them you're happy you're happy. It's a very weird thing that our facial muscles can do how they can signify the brain. So women especially know the difference between happiness and fake happiness if you ever told another woman a piece of good news and she's like, oh yeah, I'm so happy for you. Yeah. And that smile just doesn't reach her eyes, right? We see that all the time. Our alarm bells go off when we see that in authentic smile and in business this is hugely important. Body language myth. I wanna bust is we are often taught just smile. Just smile and it will make everyone better. Will make people like you. But if you have an inauthentic smile you just come off as an authentic people can recognize the difference between the oh yeah it's so great to meet you, right? They can see that fake smile. So what I say is only smile when you mean it my next one, you're not gonna like those so much. It's a little bit more serious. Okay let's just do it contempt. Okay so contempt, hatred. Disdain. This is the most powerful micro expression. It is the most powerful micro expression, contempt is very simply a one sided mouth raise. Looks kind of like a smirk right? Actually very easy to do. Everyone can control this. The danger with contempt is that people often think it's happiness. They think oh I'm not very happy but I just kind of show this. Yeah great. And they pull up like as as as if it's a half smile, it is the absolute opposite of a half smile. So um what's interesting is the body also will turn away the body language Q. With contempt is that people don't like something they'll make this content agriculture and then they'll turn their body back. It's called distancing behavior. It's what we do. We actually try to physically get away from something that we don't like. So let's practice this very quickly. So once the thing is something that really irritates you. Yeah, lift that one up, pull out your phones or your web cams. I want to see the faces. A really easy one thinks something makes you really kind of irritated, yep. You got it max. Perfect. Let me see your sheet. You're laughing. You can't laugh. Oh perfect. Something. It's hard to think of something that really makes you irritated. That's the way to do it. Um What's scary about contempt is it is the physical expression of a very, very deep and aggressive emotion.
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