Gaye Davies of Lincoln Park can read her husband’s look of love with a single glance.
She describes it as his “cheesy, over-the-top, sappy, doe-eyed look, with a slight head tilt.”
Sounds like a look perfected at Humane Societies across the country.
“He’s saying I started it, but then [he] picked it up,” Davies said. “Now when one does it, the other does it back. It’s become the universal sign for ‘I love you.’
“It’s completely silly, but it makes us laugh.”
It’s no surprise that non-verbal communication is heavily responsible for conveying our thoughts and emotions.
Just think of your favorite reality show and how you instinctively scan faces for signs of what the participants are really thinking. We note glares, wide-eyed fear, phony smiles and other facial and eye movements that give us an inkling of what the show’s outcome might be.
But just how much information non-verbal communication conveys might be surprising.
In intimate relationships, what we show on our face–and how our partners read it–can bring couples closer or push them apart.
“Facial expressions play an enormous role in understanding, tracking and responding to the feelings of those we care most about,” said Paul Ekman, author of “Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communications and Emotional Life” (Henry Holt and Co., $25).
What happens on the face depends on whether the relationship is functional or dysfunctional, Ekman said. “In dysfunctional relationships, it’s not that expressions play no role, but there’s a different array.”
According to research by a psychologist and mathematicians at the University of Washington who developed a mathematical model for predicting divorce, one of the best predictors of marital dissolution was a look of contempt on the face of one partner while the couples were discussing difficult issues.
The research was done between 1988 and ’92, with follow-up between 1992 and ’96.
Researchers videotaped couples for 15 minutes while they discussed areas of conflict, such as sex or money, and assigned points to their behaviors during the interaction.
In the follow-up four years later, they’d accurately predicted divorce 94 percent of the time.
“Faces are the primary signal system in humans, and some other animals as well, for emotions,” Ekman said.
Listed as one of 100 “eminent psychologists of the 20th Century” by the American Psychological Association in 2002, Ekman has been studying the facial expression of emotion across cultures–from the United States and Japan to Papua New Guinea and Brazil–since the 1960s.
With colleague Wallace Friesen, he wrote the Facial Action Coding System, a technical guide to the movements of facial muscles and how some of those movements relate to specific emotions.
The work was published in 1978, updated in 2002, and has been used by researchers in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and neurology as well as by actors, animators and computer scientists.
Caroline Keating, an associate professor of psychology at Colgate University, has used Ekman’s research on facial expressions to study how children identify emotions and to study deception in children and adults.
A key player
In relationships, facial expressions “play a crucial role” in telling us what our partner really wants. “Oftentimes we say we want an honest answer or opinion, when in fact what we’re looking for is social support,” Keating said.
“The [challenge] is to figure out exactly what that person is asking us for. Facial expressions are often the best clues we have to look underneath the meaning of words.”
(Hint: Remember this the next time your partner asks, “Do you like my outfit?”)
According to oft-cited research published in 1972, 7 percent of emotional meaning is delivered through words. Thirty-eight percent is conveyed by tone of voice.
Fifty-five percent is delivered through non-verbal cues: posture, gestures, facial expressions.
“I can’t tell you how to get to the post office with my face, but there’s not a better system for signaling how I feel moment to moment,” Ekman said.
The voice may convey the same information, but relative to facial expressions, it takes a lot longer.
“In a hundredth of a second, you can [see] an emotional expression [on the face],” Ekman said, “whereas someone has to be willing to talk in order for you to get signals from the voice.”
Thanks to a 17-year relationship, including eight years of marriage, Davies and husband Brent have had plenty of time to hone their ability to read each other’s non-verbal signals.
The leering squint
There’s what Gaye describes as Brent’s “leering, squinty-eyed look,” the one she now knows means “I don’t like that; don’t go there.”
Or if they’re in public, it’s more likely, “I asked you not to talk about that,” the visual equivalent of a kick under the table.
One of Gaye’s signature looks is more unconscious.
“She scrunches her nose up,” like Mr. Magoo, Brent said. “Typically it means she’s listening and processing, but it’s not making sense to her. Or it could be she’s not buying what I’m saying, but typically it’s that I haven’t explained it well enough.”
Because they’re so comfortable with each other, “there’s probably less non-verbal communication that goes on,” Brent said. “We pretty much just lay it out there. There’s not much guesswork and certainly no games.
“Sometimes you almost wish it were the other way around.”
Sometimes, so does Summur Roberts, a communications student at Loyola University who lives in Pilsen.
She met her boyfriend in December, after corresponding sporadically via e-mail for a couple of months.
“I’m a very visual person and, to be honest, I’ve never been fully comfortable with online dating because it’s so one-dimensional. All you can see is the face [in photographs].
“You can’t [really] see features. You can’t see expressions,” she said.
Warmed by a smile
When Roberts met Tarik Stokes, she was struck by his warmth, conveyed by his smile. “His eyes smile, his whole face smiles,” she said.
(Ekman said the difference between a true smile of enjoyment and a fake smile of social convention can be observed in the area between the eyebrow and the upper eyelid. The skin moves down slightly in the true smile. “It’s very subtle, but you can learn to see it.”)
Roberts also was won over that day by how Tarik would furrow his brow for a second before responding to her questions, which told her he was really thinking, not just giving some pat answer.
Now when he catches a fleeting expression on her face, he’ll often ask, `What’s that face?’ Which didn’t thrill her at first.
“You can’t always decipher your feelings at the drop of a dime–I think that’s where my frustration [was]. Maybe I have a feeling about something, but I may not be completely comfortable with the fact that I have that feeling, so I may not want to say.”
Most of the time, Ekman said, if a “look” is on our face for a second or two, we’re aware of the emotion and of the expression.
What’s trickier are micro expressions, fast movements lasting less than one-fifth of a second because the person may be unaware of the emotion, or trying to conceal it.
In those cases, said Ekman, the observer is “taking information from someone who’s not really giving it to you.”
Reading into the expressions you observe in others also can be somewhat misleading.
According to Hannah Rockwell, associate professor of communication, also at Loyola, “So much of what goes on with our faces may not have anything to do with the other person. You really need to check out your perceptions.
The proper wording
“Asking, `You’ve been looking sad today, is everything OK?’ is more effective than, `What’s wrong with you?'” she said, which could lead to defensiveness.
When Ekman, for instance, notices a look of annoyance on his wife’s face, he asks if something’s wrong or, “Is there anything we need to talk about?”
“I still leave her the choice, but I raise the issue.”
Roberts recently moved in with her boyfriend, bringing the couple “to a whole new level of subtleties and learning things and deciphering each other’s expressions.”
Is she nervous about being asked, “What’s that face?” more often than before? No.
“I’m becoming comfortable enough with myself around him to just be honest about my feelings. . . . [I say,] `Hey, here’s what it is,’ for better or worse, and I know he’s not going to judge me for it.”
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Reading the signs of subtle and blatant signals
Most of us miss what’s on the faces of others unless we’re trained. Even people whose jobs require reading emotions and uncovering deception miss them, according to Paul Ekman, author of “Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communications and Emotional Life.”
Ekman conducts such training internationally with law enforcement, medical professionals and others. To better read the signs in your partner, he offers some tip-offs as to what the face is really saying.
ANGER
One of the first and most subtle but reliable signs of anger–because very few of us can do it voluntarily–is when the red margins of the lips narrow and tighten. You’ll also see a lowering of the eyebrows simultaneous with the upper eyelid, “so you get a bit of glare appearing,” Ekman said. When anger gets very intense, you’ll see the mouth get square and tight.
Remember that anger in an intimate relationship isn’t necessarily a bad thing (of course, abusive behavior is).
“One of the hardest things to learn in relationships is how to deal with disagreements or conflicts in constructive rather than destructive ways. Anger lets you know there’s a problem that needs to be dealt with,” he said.
CONTEMPT AND DISGUST
These are destructive emotions in a relationship. Contempt is feeling morally superior, which means you feel your partner is morally inferior. Disgust is being repulsed, which doesn’t bode well for a happy union. On the face, contempt is the only emotional expression that’s asymmetrical–only one side of the mouth tightens or moves. You’ll see a slight tightening of one corner of the lips, which looks like a lopsided smile.
Very often, we enjoy being contemptuous, Ekman said. So if you see something like a smirk along with that tightening of one corner of the mouth, “then you know the person’s getting a kick out of feeling contempt.”
When someone’s disgusted, you’ll see a rise of the upper lip, akin to what you’d do to show the dentist your upper teeth and wrinkling of the nose, which raises the nostrils.
“Nobody on the receiving side enjoys [seeing these]. It puts distance between you and the other person,” he said.
FEAR
The most obvious sign of fear is when the white part of the eye above the iris begins to show, which happens with very few of us in our normal gaze. When someone is surprised, you’d start to see a little of that whiteness. As you move closer to fear, it increases.
Another sign of fear is a subtle stretching of the lips horizontally, as if there were a rubber band in each corner pulling them toward the back of the head slightly. Only 10 to 20 percent of the population can do that voluntarily, Ekman said.
Because it’s nearly impossible to do deliberately, a raising and coming together of the eyebrows so they appear high and straight across is a powerful sign of fear. “No one can fake it.”
DECEPTION
“We don’t have a Pinocchio’s nose,” Ekman said. “There’s no sign of lying itself; there are signs of emotions that don’t fit what a person is saying, and there are signs of concealed emotions. If I’m furious and trying to hide it, it might appear in micro expressions–that’s the closest to any direct sign of lying.”
POSITIVE EMOTIONS
When it comes to feeling good, there are more than a dozen positive emotions, ranging from amusement and contentment to nachas (Yiddish for a pleasure-pride combination), gratitude and relief, yet they share a single expression: the smile. And it’s not just movement of the lips but the muscle that orbits the eye that contracts and “smiles” too.
“The way we know which enjoyable emotion someone is feeling is by the sound of voice,” Ekman said. “The face tells us something good is happening; the sound of the voice tells which one of the good things it is.”
— Kimberlee Roth
