from the time we're born we spend an
inordinate amount of time
studying each other's faces as babies we
can recognize that big
smile that we see of that caring mother
looking down on us
and so forth but we're confronted with
many
variants of that just take a look at
these
all examples of smiles some come to us
they're very genuine some are a little
reserved some
are a little nervous they're all smiles
but what are they communicating
my name is joe navarro and for 25 years
i was a
spy catcher for the fbi you may be
familiar with my previous video
i talked about body language there's
just no pinocchio effect
and people who prattle that and say well
we can detect deception because the
person
touches their nose or covers their
mouths that's just sheer nonsense
and today we're going to focus on the
face
when it comes to non-verbals the face
is key there's so much information
and feelings that we receive from the
face
that for us the face takes primacy
so one of the ways to to look at the the
face
is to think of it in two areas comfort
and discomfort because really that's how
the brain
reacts to the world so let's start with
psychological comfort
when we're very comfortable the muscles
of the face
become very relaxed and we have all the
behaviors that are associated with it
smiling laughing usually the pupils are
slightly wider
the lips are full and usually the chin
tends to be further out
the very second that there's
psychological
discomfort usually it begins to register
in several areas now for some people
we'll see it in the forehead
and here between the eyes where they'll
be
furrowing of the forehead or squinting
and of course the tucking down of the
chin
or in some instances where something is
really emotional
you'll see the chin begins to vibrate
covering of the eyes also is a display
of psychological discomfort
so our faces what we feel in that moment
is immediately displayed
by our non-verbals and the easiest way
to look at it is
is that behavior consistent with comfort
or is it consistent
with discomfort
one of the questions that i'm often
asked is how do we read each other how
do we read each other's
faces we start with the hair
how it's combed what color it is is it
dry
is it wet is it curly is it disarranged
as children we play with each other's
hair
we look at each other's hair we
immediately notice
when it's wet or dry or it's
changed in some form we look at the
forehead for information
when it's smooth the forehead tells us
that everything is well and placid
when it's furrowed we begin to notice
that perhaps there's some sort of
discomfort the eyebrows
you know the arching of the eyebrows is
our exclamation point doing that
eyebrow flash when we see someone we
recognize
and we go hey how are you the glabella
this little area between the eyes
someone says something
we don't like and we might squint at
them
and look at them as scans
the nose do we wrinkle our nose
upward we do that bunny nose at about
three months of age babies are already
doing this when
they don't like something they're being
offered and then there's the lips
which convey so much information maybe
as often as the eyes i'm asked about
smiles
we have the social smile
the interested smile
a curious smile
we have little secretive smiles that we
might give
to someone that we're interested in
there is so much to our mouths it's it's
so expressive
but starting at a very young age we're
already focusing
on these things you may not notice for
instance
the pupils whether they're wide or
narrowed but subconsciously your brain
is assessing this information
there's just so much there so
we never stop communicating with our
faces
it is something that is always
telegraphing
our emotions and our sentiments and
sometimes
even our desires
one of the things that was startling to
me when studying faces
was what i had been picking up
for decades when i look back on the lone
ranger
watching the movies of zorro or
even batman and robin one of the things
you notice is
all these good guys were wearing masks
that covered the eyes
but the bad guys always covered their
mouths so the bank robbers would wear a
bandana and then just pull it over their
faces undoubtedly
we are being affected by the fact that
we cannot see the full face
i mean we first had reporting of this
right after world war one where we saw
the horrors
of that war and soldiers who had their
faces
somehow ameliorated they had to wear
these masks
and even with mass they still were not
being
received well into society and so
there has always been something
unsettling about not being
able to see the full face and i think it
has to do with the fact that we get so
much information
from there but
even with mass we can still communicate
with each other we can still
understand what people are trying to say
and you can pick up above the line of
the mask
look at this clip notice that
even though they're wearing a mask we
can still see the emotions behind that
mask
we can still decode that face now
obviously
you're not going to see lip compression
but with some people
you really see it both in the forehead
and in the glabella region of the eyes
and then
of course in the orbits of the eyes
there's a lot of squinting so
for some people it doesn't matter that
you can't see their mouth
you'll certainly see it in their face
but you know the rest of the body is
transmitting information
if we can't see the full face where can
we go
the neck the shoulders right the hands
the fingers the thumbs in particular
right so when we emphasize
the fingers are wide when we lack
emphasis
our fingers come together even our feet
communicate sentiments so we have to
redirect where we're getting information
but
always remember that from the time we're
born we're looking at the
face for that information we just have
to be patient with ourselves
and know that there's still information
out there we may just have to get it
from other parts of the body
a lot of us now are doing these uh video
conferences
zoom google meets and and so forth and
the visual range has changed completely
because now we're only seeing maybe from
the chest up
maybe we're only seeing the face one of
the things we know
is that in face-to-face meetings this
tends to be on a subconscious level very
aggressive so
directly looking at another person as i
am
now directly looking at the lens is
actually creating
discomfort that we actually get greater
comfort
when we turn slightly it makes the other
person
relaxed and one of the mistakes that i'm
finding on
zoom calls and google meets and other
environments
is this very direct intense look at the
lens
so one of the things that you can try
next time you're on a
video call is angle yourself and
see if you find that more comfortable
see if it's more relaxed see if in
doing that behavior that the other
person then does the same thing
they feel a little bit more relaxed
maybe they lean back a little
bit more one of the things that i teach
is that
synchrony is harmony so the more
that i can get the other party to
relax to mirror
my behaviors the more i know that we are
in synchrony
and that's powerful because we are
both engaging each other at a conscious
and at a subconscious level
so about 30 years ago while
still working for the fbi and conducting
thousands of interviews i began to
notice
that there were times when i would look
at a face
and there was just something odd about
it i couldn't quite
pinpoint what i was seeing and so i
began to think about
the concept of chirality and chirality
usually in in chemistry means that when
you fold something over
it looks like it's going to fold over
perfectly but in fact
it doesn't and that's what i found with
faces
sometimes when someone presents in a way
that
they're difficult to interpret it's
because
their faces are actually showing
two emotions one on the left and one in
the
right and if you divide the face in half
and just cover
one half of the face you'll be able to
more clearly see
what that specific emotion is take a
look at these photographs
now these photographs are taken during
emotionally
charged moments and when you first
see the face you may look at it and say
well there's something going on there
but it's not
till you cover perfectly one half
and then cover the other half that you
begin to see
the real gross differences
normally when we feel an emotion
we see it fully on both sides of the
face
but because we don't see the full
emotion on the whole face
that's something that we need to focus
on and determine
why because something isn't right
why do we focus so much on the face
we focus on the face because of
necessity
because through our faces we can
show that we care through our faces
we can validate what others are going
through
and so by studying the faces of others
we gain understanding about ourselves
realizing that
our body language will affect others
positively
and that's why we study non-verbals we
study non-verbals because it benefits
us but it also benefits others