Former FBI Agent Explains How to Read Facial Expressions

Former FBI agent and body language expert Joe Navarro is back, this time to breaks down the non-verbal ways we communicate using facial expressions.

What does it mean when we scrunch up our noses or show tension in the glabella?

Joe also goes deep into chirality, and equates this concept with some of the most quizzical of human expressions.

Check out Joe's book "The Dictionary of Body Language" https://www.jnforensics.com/

- From the time we're born,we spend an inordinate amount of timestudying each other's faces.As babies we can recognize that big smilethat we see of that caring motherlooking down on us and so forth.But we're confronted withmany 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, butwhat are they communicating?My name's Joe Navarro.And for 25 years I was aspy catcher for the FBI.You may be familiarwith my previous video,I talked about body language.There's just no Pinocchio effect.And people who prattlethat, and say, well,we can detect deception because the persontouches their nose or covers their mouth.That's just sheer nonsense.And today we're goingto focus on the face.When it comes tonon-verbals, the face is key.There's so much information and feelingsthat we receive from the face,that for us, the face takes primacy.So one of the ways to look at the faceis to think of it in twoareas, comfort and discomfort,because really that's how thebrain reacts to the world.So let's start with psychological comfort.When we're very comfortable,the muscles of the facebecome very relaxed,and we have all the behaviorsthat are associated with it.Smiling, laughing, usuallythe pupils are slightly wider.The lips are full, and usually the chintends to be further out.The very second that there'spsychological discomfort,usually it begins toregister in several areas.Now, for some people we'llsee it in the foreheadand here between the eyes,where there'll be furrowingof the forehead or squinting.And of course, thetucking down of the chin.Or, in some instances wheresomething is really emotional,you'll see the chin begins to vibrate.Covering of the eyes alsois a display of psychological discomfort.So our faces, what we feel in that momentis immediately displayedby 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 questionsthat 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 playwith each other's hair,we look at each other's hair.We immediately noticewhen 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 usthat everything is well and placid.When it's furrowed, we begin to noticethat perhaps there'ssome sort of discomfort.The eyebrows, the arching of the eyebrowsis our exclamation point.Doing that eyebrow flashwhen we see someone,we recognize them, wego, hey, how are you?The glabella, this littlearea between the eyes.Someone says something we don't like,and we might squint at themand look at them askance.The nose, do we wrinkle our nose upward?We do that bunny nose.At about three months of agebabies are already doing this onewhen they don't like somethingthey're being offered.And then there's the lips, whichconvey 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 secretivesmiles that we might giveto someone that we're interested in.There is so much to ourmouths, it's so expressive.But starting at a very young age,we're already focusing on these things.You may not notice, forinstance, the pupils,whether they're wide or narrowed,but subconsciously your brainis assessing this information.There's just so much there.So we never stopcommunicating with our faces.It is something thatis always telegraphingour emotions, and our sentiments,and sometimes even our desires.[dynamic music]One of the things that was startling to mewhen studying faces was what I hadbeen 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 noticeis all these good guyswere wearing masks that covered the eyes,but the bad guys alwayscovered their mouths.So the bank robbers would wear a bandanaand then just pull it over their faces.Undoubtedly, we are beingaffected by the factthat we cannot see the full face.I mean, we first had reporting of thisright after World War I.Where we saw the horrors of that warand soldiers who had theirfaces somehow ameliorated,they had to wear these masks.And even with masks,they still were not beingreceived well into society.And so there has alwaysbeen something unsettlingabout not being able to see the full face.And I think it has to do with the factthat we get so muchinformation from there.But even with masks,we can still communicate with each other,we can still understand whatpeople are trying to say.And you can pick up abovethe line of the mask.Look at this clip, notice thateven though they're wearing a mask,we can still see theemotions behind that mask.We can still decode that face.Now obviously, you're notgonna see lip compression,but with some people you reallysee it both in the foreheadand in the glabella region of the eyes.And then, of course, inthe orbits of the eyesthere's a lot of squinting.So for some people,it doesn't matter thatyou can't see their mouth,you'll certainly see it in their face.But you know, the rest of the bodyis transmitting information.If we can't see the fullface, where can we go?The neck, the shoulders, right?The hands, the fingers, thethumbs 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 wherewe're getting information.But always remember, thatfrom the time we're bornwe're looking at the facefor that information.We just have to be patient with ourselvesand know that there's stillinformation out there,we may just have to get itfrom other parts of the body.A lot of us now are doingthese video conferences,Zoom, Google Meets, and so forth.And the visual rangehas changed completelybecause now we're only seeingmaybe from the chest up,maybe we're only seeing the face.One of the things we know isthat in face to face meetings,this tends to be on a subconsciouslevel, very aggressive.So directly looking at another personas I am now directly looking at the lensis actually creating discomfort,that we actually get greatercomfort when we turn slightly,it makes the other person relax.And one of the mistakes thatI'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 ifyou find that more comfortable.See if it's more relaxed.See if in doing that behaviorthat the other personthen 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 teachis that synchrony is harmony.So the more that I can getthe other party to relax,to mirror my behaviors,the more I know that we are in synchrony.And that's powerful because we areboth engaging each other at a consciousand at a subconscious level.So about 30 years ago, whilestill working for the FBIand conducting thousands of interviews,I began to notice that there were timeswhen I would look at a faceand there was just something odd about it.I couldn't quite pinpointwhat I was seeing.And so I began to think aboutthe concept of chirality.And chirality usually, in chemistry,means that when you fold something overit looks like it's goingto fold over perfectly,but in fact it doesn't.And that's what I found with faces.Sometimes when someone presents in a waythat they're difficult to interpretit's because their faces areactually 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 seewhat that specific emotion is.Take a look at these photographs.Now these photographs are takenduring 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 youcover perfectly one half,and then cover the other halfthat you begin to see thereal gross differences.Normally, when we feel an emotion,we see it fully on both sides of the face.But because we don't see thefull emotion on the whole face,that's something that we need to focus on,and determine why, becausesomething isn't right.Why do we focus so much on the face?We focus on the face because of necessity,because through our faceswe can show that we care,through our faces we can validatewhat others are going through.And so, by studying the faces of others,we gain understanding about ourselves,realizing that our body languagewill affect others positively.And that's why we study nonverbals.We study nonverbalsbecause it benefits us,but it also benefits others.