Unmasking the Face summary

Our faces reveal surprise in a variety of different ways. If you want to accurately gauge someone’s level of surprise, be sure to catch the clues in their facial expression before they disappear!

Surprise is linked with three key facial signals: raised eyebrows, widened eyes and a dropping jaw. Let’s start with the eyebrows, which will appear high and curved. This signal alone typically suggests that a person is doubtful or skeptical. When combined with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, it’s more likely that they’re surprised.

Fear and surprise are displayed quite differently in facial expressions, and these two experiences differ in three ways.

First of all, while surprise can sometimes be pleasant, fear is always unpleasant – so much so that fearful emotions trigger further physiological responses, including perspiration, paleness and rapid breathing. Second, surprise is always experienced after an event.

While we might not find all the same things disgusting, we definitely react to disgust in the same way. Disgust is a feeling of aversion that can be triggered by all of our senses, from foul smells, an offensive sight, the taste of rotten food, the touch of something slimy or even the sound of something gross that causes disgust, like retching. Disgusted facial expressions play out on the lower part of the face, centered around the mouth and nose.

When we’re disgusted, we tend to raise our upper lip, and the lower lip may or may not follow. This is typically accompanied by a wrinkled nose, which in turn causes our lower eyelids and cheeks to rise around our eyes.

It’s always good to be able to recognize anger quickly. If you can tell when someone’s mad enough to lash out, you'll be able to get yourself out of harm’s way in time. Thankfully, anger comes with clear facial signals around the eyebrows, eyelids and lips.

For starters, eyebrows are typically lowered and drawn together, and they allow us to discern between anger and fear. While eyebrows are also drawn together when a person experiences fear, they’re also raised, forming wrinkles on the forehead. When feeling anger, our brows are drawn together and angled downwards or flat, which doesn’t create wrinkles on the forehead. Instead, a vertical line may appear between the brows.

Happiness comes with a facial cue that we all recognize: the smile! However, the mouth isn’t the only part of the face that reveals joy.

Happiness is largely shown through changes in the lower face and lower eyelids. With the corners of the lips drawn back and raised slightly, our mouths form a happy smile. In addition, wrinkle lines may also form, running from the nose to the corner of the mouth.

In our culture, we’re often told to keep our tears to ourselves, and sadness, as a result, is usually accompanied by a muted facial expression. Nevertheless, these signals still make our feelings unmistakable.

First, it’s worth noting the relationship between sadness and distress. Distress is physical, usually accompanied by tears and wailing. Sadness, meanwhile, is a less physical and more emotional variation of distress.

Most of the time, we make facial expressions without conscious effort. But in certain situations, we might choose to manipulate our expressions. Sometimes we can get away with this – but certain clues can reveal the feelings we’re attempting to mask.

Morphology is the act of controlling one’s displayed emotion for a certain purpose. By deliberately altering certain muscles in the face, we can strengthen or weaken the appearance of an emotion. For instance, a person could mask his sadness by controlling the muscles around his lips, holding them firm instead of letting them tremble or turn down.

We’ve now explored how emotions reveal themselves on human faces – but it’s a little more complicated than that. After all, we all show our feelings differently. This, in turn, has a powerful impact on our facial expressions. Even so, it’s still possible to get to know how people’s expressions reflect what they feel, even if their expressions mystify you at first.

Enter the Eight Styles of Facial Expression. This is a system that allows us to consider people in light of their general behavior toward showing emotions.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, the face might as well be a doorway to your feelings. Let’s take a closer look at our facial expression types with two simple methods.

Start by having a partner take 14 photos of your face. Two of these should be neutral, while the others should be two each of surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness and happiness. Then, bring together ten people who don’t know you well, and have them judge the emotions they see in the photos.