- 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's 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 mouth.
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 look at 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 there'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, the arching of the eyebrows
is our exclamation point.
Doing that eyebrow flash when we see someone,
we recognize them, 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 askance.
The nose, do we wrinkle our nose upward?
We do that bunny nose.
At about three months of age
babies are already doing this one
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.
The 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 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.
[dynamic music]
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 I.
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 masks,
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 masks,
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 gonna 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.
[dynamic music]
A lot of us now are doing these video conferences,
Zoom, Google Meets, 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 relax.
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.
[dynamic music]
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 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 on 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.
[dynamic music]
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 nonverbals.
We study nonverbals because it benefits us,
but it also benefits others.