THE FACE
We humans make a lot of eye contact. Even in countries where eye contact isn’t as prevalent as it is in Western countries, they still spend a lot of time looking at the eyes. The next part of the body we look at the most is the face. A person typically glances at the face 11 times per minute in conversations.
The most impactful researcher in facial movement science was Dr. Paul Eckman. Eckman traveled to the depths of jungles to seek out tribes who had never been exposed to outside human contact to verify that facial movements and facial expressions are universal.
We truly are born with the same facial expressions and nonverbal communication strategies, and Dr. Eckman proved it. His groundbreaking book, Unmasking the Face, paved the way for modern researchers in behavior science.
In this chapter, I’m going to only introduce you to the absolutely essential elements of the face that you will need to know in order to read people. I’ll list the behavioral indicators in order of importance (according to me).
LIP COMPRESSION
When a person squeezes their lips together, they are performing one of the first ways humans learn how to say ‘no.’ When we don’t want to breastfeed, we close our lips.
If I were to give you the most accurate two-word description of what this behavior means, it is ‘withheld opinions.’ Lips compress to withhold.
In sales, if a customer is speaking to you and you see their lips compress right after they say, ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty good…’, you know you’ve got work to do. There’s a hidden or concealed objection waiting for you at the end of the sale if you don’t deal with it now.
What if you asked a close friend how they like their new job, and their response was, ‘Oh, it’s great!’ followed by a lip compression. If you try this now, you can feel that you’ve done this in the past when you were withholding opinions. We all do it.
In the courtroom, when you see lip compression in a jury, you’ve got work to do. If you’re deposing someone, and they answer a question followed by lip compression, you know there’s something being held back.
At the beginning of the book, I mentioned the importance of context. This is no exception. It’s critical that you’re able to identify the cause of the lip compression. Otherwise, spotting the behavior is next to useless.
If you are speaking about the price of a product or service when you see Lip Compression, that detail is what you need to make note of. You can deal with the objection in the moment or keep the information in your pocket till the end of the sale when you start closing the deal, and then bring it up and overcome it before they can raise the objection.
Many times, people we deal with will have unconscious objections or objections they may never verbalize at all. The ability to spot these indicators is important. You may never hear the objections spoken out loud. When you lose the sale or fail to get compliance, you (and probably the customer) will be unaware of the real reason that the sale didn’t happen. The lips can show us objections and disagreement that are totally outside the customer’s conscious awareness.
Compass Notes:
Lip Compression might be annotated by noting ‘Lc’ followed by what topic you believe caused it. For instance, in jury selection, it might look like this: ‘Lc – police officers’
OBJECT INSERTION
This is one to be on the lookout for. Object insertion simply means something is being put into the mouth. It could be a pencil, the end of a pen, a woman’s hair, or even the lips. Once something passes the barrier of the teeth, it qualifies as object insertion.
This behavior is usually indicative of a need for reassurance. Regardless of the situation, if you see this behavior in a conversation, it should be a red flag, notifying you that you have work to do.
When we see this behavior, we know the person most likely needs reassurance. Our priority here is to identify the subject matter or topic the person reacted to with object insertion.
From here, you have the option to immediately provide some kind of reassurance about the issue or save the information and preemptively address the issue later—providing the needed comfort as their desire to be reassured comes to a head.
Compass Notes:
As before, annotate using ‘Oi’ followed by the topic or subject that preceded/caused it.
TRUE VS. FALSE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
In conversations, it’s a valuable skill to know when a facial expression of disagreement, happiness, or even surprise is not the real thing. In negotiations, for example, false disagreement in the face will show you that you’ve made an offer they are likely to accept, even if the other party says otherwise.
In the courtroom, a witness pretends to smile as they talk about how happy their home life is, as they make a confirmation glance at someone in the courtroom. You’re able to immediately identify the expression as false, allowing you to sharpen your questions around the topic.
Regardless of the environment, our faces tend to betray us when we express ourselves to others. We’ve been making facial expressions and sending nonverbal cues for a hundred million years or so, but we’ve only begun speaking recently, in the grand scheme of things.
Since our nonverbal (mammalian) brain has been making genuine facial expressions and passing behaviors down through our genes for millennia, it’s fairly good at getting the expressions to look a certain way on our face. Genuine facial expressions are automatic when we feel emotions. False facial expressions come from a totally different part of our brain. This fact provides us with two main clues to spotting false, fake, or social expressions on the human faces we see every day:
THE STOP VS. FADE OF EXPRESSIONS
False facial expressions will drop off the face instead of fading. When real facial expressions are made in the brain, they come from our animal brain. False expressions come from our neocortex, the ‘human’ part of our brains. The neocortex is so inexperienced at the art of facial expressions that it will stop the expression after it makes it. True facial expressions are chemically based. The chemicals wear off in our bodies, and the expressions that are genuine will fade off the face, not just stop suddenly.
Genuine facial expressions fade. False facial expressions will suddenly go away.
THE ASYMMETRY OF FALSE EXPRESSIONS
Since the neocortex is so inexperienced at making facial expressions, it lacks the precision the mammalian brain does to equally tighten facial muscles. The mammalian brain has millions of years of practice at expressions, and our true facial expressions are almost always symmetrical.
False expressions are likely to have more muscular tension in the face on one side than the other. You will be able to see the asymmetry when someone is telling you that they agree when they don’t.
There is one notable exception to this: the contempt facial expression. Contempt is when we feel defiance, disregard, or disdain for someone. This true facial expression resembles a half-faced smile or sneer that is more prominent on one side of the face than the other.
THE ARTIFICIAL SMILE
An artificial smile isn’t deceptive. We often see articles referencing ‘fake’ smiles, referring to them as being artificial or deceptive. This isn’t the case.
Humans are social animals, and much of how we get along in life depends on our social skills. A smile to others simply means we are friendly. We smile to people all the time to be polite, with no intent to deceive, only to get along and show respect.
The smile that’s artificial is easy to spot. It’s something you can scroll through social media right now and find. In genuine smiles, the upper half of the face is very involved. The cheeks raise and show what some experts call ‘crow’s feet’ in the outer corner of the eyes. Regardless of our age, those crow’s feet show up when we smile. Even babies display this when smiling genuinely. One study even showed that people who smiled genuinely in their college yearbooks were happier decades later than those who displayed false smiles.
You should be able to look at someone who is smiling, cover up the entire lower half of the face, and still see that they are smiling. If someone is wearing a ninja mask, for example, you should be able to tell if the smile is genuine immediately.
For smiles, watch the eyes.
NOSTRIL FLARING
In behavior science, this behavior is called ‘wing dilation.’ Nostril flaring occurs mostly as a response to an increase of adrenaline in the body. As the adrenaline levels increase, the brain needs more oxygen.
Since we are social creatures, when our body needs air, we don’t open our mouths wide and pull in a huge volume of air…especially if we’re trying to hide the emotion.
The nostrils will flare due to the need for oxygen, and the need for oxygen is caused by adrenaline. The adrenaline can be a product of strong feelings of excitement, happiness, or even anger.
It’s up to you to determine the context. If you’re in a sales situation and you’re going over how much someone is going to have to pay in order to use your service, and you see lip compression and nostril flaring, you can assume this isn’t a good sign.
All emotions leave clues, and it’s our job to figure out not whodunnit, but whatdunnit.
If you’re a police interrogator, and a suspect hears their name has been cleared, and you observe nostril flaring behavior, you can rightly assume this adrenaline is anticipatory excitement.
Learning how to spot this behavior doesn’t take much time at all, and since we are already looking at the face most of the time, you won’t have to divert your attention away from the conversation to spot this behavior.
Finally, nostril flaring can indicate attraction. If you’re speaking to someone and see this while you are speaking, this can indicate attraction. The evolutionary cause of this has its roots in our desire to smell the breath of someone we find attractive or see as a potential partner.
Compass Notes:
Annotate Nostril Flaring with a simple ‘Nf’. If someone’s nostrils flared the moment they made eye contact, I would simply write, ‘Nf @ Ec’
HUSHING
Another behavior we see children do all the time is hushing. They accidentally drop the F-bomb in front of their parents for the first time, and their hand instinctively comes up to cover their mouth. As we grow up, we don’t outgrow this impulse, we just figure out ways to mask it a bit.
Any behavior that obscures the mouth from your view is considered to be hushing behavior. Hushing can indicate a few things…
When listening, hushing can indicate a person wants to stay quiet out of respect. They might casually bring their hand to their mouth as they listen. Context is important.
Mouth-covering and facial touching have proven to be one of the most reliable potential deception indicators, but remember there are no behaviors that indicate deception, only stress. Imagine you’re speaking to someone, and the moment you mention interest rates on a loan, they tell you that sounds good to them, but they also touch their face as they say it. You’ve got work to do.
In the courtroom, jurors, witnesses, and even the judge will exhibit facial-touching and hushing gestures when a topic creates internal stress.
If you’re explaining something to someone that they may object to and you see mouth-covering (hushing) behavior, it is a noteworthy indicator that could definitely indicate that you will need to explain further or ask the person if they have any reservations or questions about the issue.
Compass Notes:
This behavior could spell disaster for many professionals, but parents should look for it too. Annotate this in notes using a simple ‘Hu’ followed by the relevant causal subject. For instance, it could be written as, ‘Hu – credit score’.
SUMMARY
The face now enters as our first major source of information about how we are doing in a conversation. Stress, agreement, concealment, and even deception show themselves more often than you realize. When you learn to read the face, you get some serious leverage.
Moving further down, the next chapter will show you only the most exposing and critical behaviors you can easily learn to spot that reveal stuff people would much rather stay hidden.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
What is the most likely meaning of lip compression?
What does it mean if someone places a pen into their mouth during a negotiation?
If you see someone scratch their nose in a way that covers the mouth when they are discussing their relationship history, is this a good sign or a potential bad sign?