The Naked Face: More Than Meets the Eye

Are the eyes really the window to our soul, or can we find out what a person is thinking by simply looking at their face?

Every waking minute that we are in the presence of other people, we generate a constant stream of hypotheses and inferences about what that person might be thinking. Most of us easily parse complex distinctions in facial expressions and think we are in control of what is written on the canvas that is our face all of the time. However, in addition to the facial expressions most of us CAN read, understand, and express voluntarily, there is another class of expressions that are beyond our conscious control and more difficult to read. Paul Ekman calls these fleeting looks micro expressions (Gladwell, 2005). If we are able to get a glimpse of them on another person's face, we can get a glimpse at genuine emotion.

The face is one of our greatest communication devices and if we know how to read it, it will tell us more than meets the untrained eye.

So how good is your poker face? To find out, Explore the "More Than Meets the eye" Tab.