There is also a classic kind of sociocultural contempt from an inferior position, like the contempt adolescents have for adults, or the uneducated have for academics. This kind of contempt is a way of making yourself feel superior to those who are higher up than you on the social ladder. People who feel insecure about their own positions or status will also often use contempt as a weapon. A lot of people actually maintain power and status by expressing contempt for their inferiors. It’s a very effective method, but you tend to get very lonely at the top when nobody likes you.
Contempt: complete expression
“What do you mean you don’t read books?”
I told you earlier about Gottman’s discoveries concerning unconscious signs of disgust in married couples. At that time, it affected a relationship most if the signs came from the woman. Gottman has also measured contempt. When subtle signs of contempt are displayed by the dominant party in the relationship (usually the man), the other party (usually the woman) will feel steamrollered, convinced that the couple’s problems can’t be solved, that they have serious marital or relationship issues, and she will even get sick more often! This wasn’t the case when the subtle expressions were ones of anger or disgust; it was specific to contempt. Therefore, there is every reason to be very aware of this in any kind of relationship.
Some years ago, I was in a relationship that had stagnated. For a few months, I’d grown annoyed with my partner’s lifestyle. One day, I realized I was activating particular muscles in my face when I thought of her, making the facial expression for contempt. And this had, naturally, affected my own mental attitudes toward her.
Once I became aware of it, it was easier to avoid that muscular reaction, which caused my perceptions of her and the relationship as a whole to become a lot more positive. It was too late, though, the relationship was already doomed. Of course, there were other reasons why it ended, but my unconscious contempt for who we were in our relationship probably didn’t help.
Contempt is displayed in the face with a tightened and raised corner of the mouth. The result is a crooked smile. It can also be a raised upper lip on one side of the mouth, kind of like half a disgust mouth. Imagine Elvis (or Billy Idol). This can be subtle, no more than a twitch in the upper lip, or so obvious that the teeth are showing, depending on how strong the contempt is. The expression is often followed by a rush of air through the nose, a bit like a snort. The eyes tend to turn downward—we literally look down on the person we feel contempt for.
Joy
There are many different positive emotions, just as there are a variety of negative ones. Unfortunately we lack good names for the positives. “Happiness” and “joy” will have to do for now.
Positive emotions include enjoying sensory impressions, like smells or objects of beauty, being amused by something, or simple contentedness. The difference is less obviously displayed in the face and is more reliably identified by voice. Most expressions of joy actually have specific sounds, ranging from squeals of delight to sighs of relief. Other variations of joy are excitement, relief, and wonder, the latter of which we experience when we are overwhelmed by something incomprehensible. Ecstasy is another emotion of joy, as is the sense of achievement after struggling through a tough challenge, a kind of inner pride and joy. There is also a combination of joy and pride that parents experience when their children achieve something great. And, of course, there is the joy-related emotion that isn’t quite socially accepted: schadenfreude, where you feel satisfaction when something bad happens to someone else.
Most of these emotions are important for the functioning of our world: struggling to achieve them motivates us to do things that are good for us. We make friends and get curious about new experiences. Positive emotions also encourage us to perform activities that are essential to mankind’s survival, like sexual relations and caring for our children. Besides this, many scientists support the theory that people with optimistic outlooks on life actually live longer!
There are obvious differences between a natural and a fake smile. In a real smile, two important muscles are used: zygomaticus major, which raises the corners of the mouth, and orbicularis oculi, which tenses the area around the eyes. This will cause a bit of a squint, as the skin under the lower eyelid is contracted, the eyebrows are lowered, and lines appear at the sides of the face. Even though we can control zygomaticus major consciously, by raising the corners of our mouth in a smile, the same isn’t true of the muscle around the eye. Orbicularis oculi is divided into an inner and an outer part. The outer part can only be consciously controlled by 10 percent of all humans. And when it plays no part at all, that makes for a clear and visible difference. When this muscle isn’t contracted, we say, “Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes aren’t.” The fact that we can consciously control orbicularis oculi means, then, both that the smile is incomplete, and therefore revealed as fake, and that it frees up the area around the eyes for other, unconscious signals. In a real smile, the eyebrows are also lowered a little, but nobody who is simulating a smile consciously lowers her eyebrows. Try doing it and you’ll see you look a bit frightening.
Joy: complete expression
“Oh, One Direction is not getting back together after all!”
Some analysis suggests that happily married couples smile and use their eye muscles, while unhappily married couples don’t use them. There are also reports of lower blood pressure and more of a feeling of happiness in people who smile a lot with these muscles. It could be that the outer orbicularis oculi needs to be triggered to activate some pleasure centers in the brain, and anybody who only smiles with her mouth would be missing out on this.
We can spot fake smiles incredibly quickly. When I train people to perceive quick changes in facial expressions, I use a sequence of images to simulate microexpressions. One of these images always confuses the people taking the test. The idea is that the microexpression is supposed to represent a happy person. But the person in the photo isn’t a great actor, and the joy is only there in the mouth, not in the eyes. Despite the picture being displayed so briefly that the only change you notice consciously is a big smiling mouth, most people get the feeling something’s not right. But they have no idea what it is. They don’t realize they’ve just reacted to a dishonest facial expression until later, when they study the picture at their leisure.
So if you want to play it safe when you’re faking joy, you have to crack a truly huge smile. Then, almost all the changes the eye muscle takes care of occur just from the width of the smile, since it pushes the cheeks up and makes the skin bunch up under the eyes. This will narrow the eyes and make wrinkles show on the side of them. It makes it a lot more difficult to tell if the smile is genuine or not. The only clue will be the eyebrows and the skin under it, which are lowered by the outer eye muscle in a genuine smile.
Mixed Emotions
To finish off, I want to show you some pictures of mixed emotions, where a face is displaying more than one emotion at once. This is very common in ordinary facial expressions. The trick is to be able to tell which parts come from which emotions, and to be able to do it quickly. The pictures shown on the following page consist of elements from two different emotions. Try to tell which emotions they are, and which parts of the face are expressing them. The answers are here. But try it on your own first without peeking!
CORRECT ANSWERS
a) Sadness + Anger
Sadness = eyebrows, eyes. Anger = mouth
b) Surprise + Fear
Surprise = forehead, eyebrows, eyes. Fear = mouth
c) Disgust + Surprise
Disgust = mouth, nose, lower eyelids. Surprise = upper eyelids, eyebrows, forehead
d) Anger + Contempt
Anger = eyebrows, eyes. Contempt = nose, mouth
e) Sadness + Fear
Sadness = eyebrows, eyes. Fear = mouth
f) Disgust + Fear
Disgust = mouth, nose, lower eyelids. Fear = upper eyelids, eyebrows, f
orehead
g) Fake joy
Joy = mouth. Neutral = the rest of the face
h) Umm … Anger? Fear? Desperate for the bathroom? Reptilian? Send your suggestions to the publisher!
ON THE OTHER HAND
As Usual, Things Are More Complicated Than They Seem
The way I’ve been describing emotions here, as “labels” for different inherent physical responses, where each emotion (or, at least, each basic emotion) is tied to a specific facial expression, is often referred to as the classic view on emotions. Paul Ekman, who I’ve mentioned a couple times, didn’t invent it, but he has been one of the main proponents of this theory in modern times, and has also carried out important research to further our understanding of the field.
However, there are other ways of conceptualizing emotions. Psychology professor Lisa Barrett has recently published results that suggest that the classic view may be incorrect. Many other researchers support her view—in fact, there is a whole movement that’s working to change our entire view of emotions.
To begin with, studies measuring the activation of facial muscles have shown that our real-life expressions for the various emotions are not as well-defined as the ones in the pictures that you’ve just been practicing on. Our faces are constantly in motion, and often, we need to understand the context where an expression occurs in order to be able to determine which emotion it displays. In other words, the pictures you’ve been studying on these last few pages are simplifications, or stereotypes. The expressions you’ll encounter in real life will be much more complex than that.
However, what Barrett is claiming is that not merely our facial expressions, but also what we call our emotions are culturally learned rather than aspects of our biological programming. This is evident from the fact that a single emotion can be expressed in different ways by the body (you may, for example, experience a blood pressure spike on one occasion when you’re angry, but not on another), and the same physical expressions can be interpreted as indicating different emotional states depending on their context (profuse sweating can indicate both an upset stomach and being in love).
Therefore, Barrett suggests that instead of talking about emotions, we should talk about emotional categories, in the sense that an emotion within a category can be expressed or experienced in various ways, unlike the classic view, where our emotions are physiologically distinct from one another.
This is called the constructivist view, and if it is correct, this whole chapter was a waste of ink. Because within this view, we can’t discuss, understand, or detect emotions in the way I’ve just taught you to.
Although much of the critique Barrett directs at the classic view seems merited to me, I don’t find her own view any more convincing. First of all, I’m not sure it’s really a problem that our facial expressions for various emotions aren’t unique. I’ve already pointed out that emotional expressions can be very brief, and often contain mixed expressions. But if you’re going to learn to tell them apart, we’re going to have to begin somewhere. Simplification is a useful, essential technique for learning—we just have to make sure we remember that what we’re studying is simplified.
Barrett also “proves” the constructivist thesis by making statements such as the following:
There is no single difference between anger and fear, because there’s no single “Anger” and no single “Fear” [in bodily terms].
Fear is not a bodily pattern—just as bread is not flour—but emerges from the interactions of [mental] core systems.
The problem here is probably just my own lack of familiarity with scientific jargon, but I still can’t see why the fact that the body responds differently in different situations, or that we need mental constructs to fully understand what we’re feeling, should contradict any of the things you’ve learned up to this point. On the other hand, it does complicate things a bit. But human beings are complicated. And things, as usual, are never as simple as they seem.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the next few years will bring; if Barrett and the constructivists are right, we’ll be facing a total paradigm shift when it comes to our understanding of emotions. There are some indications that this is what will happen (and if it does, feel free to tear this chapter out of the book). But let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.
Help! I See Emotional People!
How to Respond to Emotions That Are Just Appearing
What should you do when you observe subtle emotional expressions (like the ones you’ve just learned to recognize) in the person you’re talking to? First of all, stay calm. As Charles Darwin wrote in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, “When we witness any deep emotion, our sympathy is so strongly excited, that close observation is forgotten or rendered almost impossible.” For any subtle expressions, you never know if the person wants you to know about her emotional state or not. Before you choose to respond to the emotion, you should also determine if what you’re seeing is a weak emotion or a strong one that is being controlled. The easiest way to do this is to pay attention to context. If you notice the emotion right at the beginning of a conversation, the source of the emotion probably isn’t whatever you’re talking about. Then, it’s more likely that she brought this emotion with her into the conversation. It may not have anything to do with your relationship and is probably related to something that happened to her earlier. But it could also be about the expectations she has of the conversation or where she thinks it may go.
Most emotional expressions last no longer than a few seconds. How long they last depends on the intensity of the emotion. An intense, short expression that just flashes by is an indication that the emotion is being consciously or unconsciously disguised. A less intense expression that lasts longer is more often indicative of conscious repression of the emotion. (We’re presuming here that she isn’t simply coming out and telling you how she feels.)
There are some emotions you will want to keep from erupting fully. You should respond to them as soon as you see signs of them, preferably before she becomes aware of them herself. For other emotions, it’s enough to respond to them indirectly and give them some space in the conversation. What follows are some solid strategies for responding to each of the different basic emotions we have been exploring (although I have skipped surprise and joy, since they rarely need to be “handled”).
Sadness
Whether you should respond to somebody’s sadness or not depends on your relationship and your previous communication. Everybody, even your kids, needs some privacy to be able to deal with the things that upset them, and we all need to be left some space to withdraw. You can offer a cautious opening for a conversation by asking if everything’s OK, but even this depends on the context and the relationship. The important thing is that if you see any signs of sadness in somebody, you have to take them seriously. These signs indicate that something is up and that this person needs comforting. The only questions are whether it ought to come from you or from somebody else, and whether it should be now or later.
If there is somebody who is closer to the sad person than you are, tell the person what you saw. It might be more difficult, because of the professional relationship, for a manager to comfort an employee than it would be for one of his colleagues to do so. If it’s a close relationship, in your family or your children, you have to make it clear to whoever is sad that you’re there for the person, to talk about it on his terms, when he wants to.
Anger
When you observe anger in somebody, remember that you probably don’t know what caused it or who it is directed at. It isn’t necessarily about you. Also, remember that what may look like signs of anger could actually be signs of concentration or confusion. If you’re having a conversation, maybe you just haven’t explained yourself clearly enough. If you know that the expression is anger, and you want to respond to the emotion, it’s a good idea to avoid the word “angry” completely. Maybe he’s doing all he can to keep his feelings to h
imself, and the last thing he needs is for somebody to comment on it. “Whoa, you look angry!” is simply a bad thing to say.
A better idea would be to respond to it at a later time, the day after, perhaps, when emotions aren’t running as high and they won’t have the same impact on the conversation. If a negotiation or conversation has come to a standstill, and you can’t move on because somebody has lost his temper, it’s time for a coffee break. Or maybe you could sleep on it instead.
The most effective way of handling somebody’s anger and turning it around is to use opinion aikido, which you read about in chapter 3. “If I were in your shoes, I would have reacted in exactly the same way. No doubt about it. Sugar or milk?” If this doesn’t work, then you should at least try to make sure nobody makes any decisions or performs any actions that could have consequences further down the road. When we’re angry, we tend not to think things through properly.
Fear
If you see somebody display fear, you should begin by reassuring her that she is safe. For example, if you have to give an employee bad news and she starts displaying signs of fear, you should assure her that her job is not in danger or that you are very happy with her efforts. If you’ve just made somebody uncomfortable, give her a support to lean on so she doesn’t fall.
If it’s a conversation between close friends, you can be more direct: tell her something seems to be bothering her, and ask if she wants to talk about it. You can also offer security and support by establishing rapport, or use direct physical contact if your relationship is very close. Hugs are always a good way to offer support (assuming they are used the right way; there will be more about this in chapter 10 on anchors), as are their verbal equivalents.
The Art of Reading Minds Page 11