A lot changed during 2020. Now that face masks are the new normal, it can be harder to know what another person is feeling. Have you ever wondered what you’re missing under someone’s mask? Are they smiling or frowning under there? Learn the secrets of reading facial expressions in this episode.
Tyler Small: Certainly part of hacking emotional intelligence is learning how to read people's faces. However, recently we find that, especially if you're out in public or in the workplace and in a face-to-face environment, you can't actually see people's faces. Most of the face is hidden under a mask. So what do you do?
[00:00:23] I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence. Recently, I read an article on the website, The Healthy.com fantastic article. I've read a ton of articles, watch a ton of videos on body language, reading, facial expressions. I've downloaded several apps to help me try and learn micro expressions and things like that.
[00:00:48] And. I found this article to be a great little summary. So I'm going to, I'm going to summarize some of it. I'm going to, I'm going to read you a few specific things from the article it's written by a lady named Lauren Khan. Who's written a lot of articles from the New York Times and a lot of high visibility sites.
[00:01:05] This is a great writer here. She does a great job putting this together and she reviews some of the work from an article in. Audiology Today by Atcherson. And she reviews some of the work of Samuel Atcherson, a professor from the University of Arkansas in which was published in Audiology Today.
[00:01:29] And if you don't know, audiology is the study of hearing. An audiologist helps people with hearing aids, hearing impairment, et cetera. It's related to speech, language pathology. A speech language pathologists will help someone. To develop their their communication skills and audiologist will help to diagnose and treat as much as possible or augment a hearing disability hearing impairment.
[00:01:55]This guy, Samuel Atcherson professor at University of Arkansas. He talks a little bit about what masks do for the hearing impaired. There's some negative impacts, but the rest of the article talks about how we can overcome this.
[00:02:10]Which is very important. If you have a hearing impairment. Or if you know someone with a hearing impairment or if you're trying to hack your emotional intelligence. So just some quick facts here. It says that masks muffle the sounds of speech coming from someone's mouth.
[00:02:28] It says here, for example, a surgical mask can muffle sound by five decibels while a transparent mask can muffle sound. And between 12 to 13.3 decibels. So sometimes we think, Oh, the hearing impaired, they need to see my mouth. Therefore I'll use a transparent mask.
[00:02:49]But that actually muffles sound, what is that, almost three times as much. And then it says, meanwhile, a homemade mask made of transparent cloth can muffle sound by 21.1 decibels. It says transparent face masks are only a temporary fix to a bigger problem, especially for the hearing impaired.
[00:03:10]So the ones I'm imagining. I don't know if this is the ones that they used in the study, but the transparent cloth. I'm not sure what exactly what type of cloth that was. But what I'm imagining is that the type of rubbery Cloth that you can still want to. It basically looks like rubber.
[00:03:27] It's waterproof and that's the type I've seen advertised as, Hey, use this so people can see you talking and see you smile. And those are some great benefits. Unfortunately, it decreases the sound 21 decibels, which is quite a huge amount. My wife has tried out the.
[00:03:43] The face shields as an alternative to a mask and we found that it's extremely difficult to hear through it. The sound is basically bounced off the face shield and back right at her. So while you can see the lips more easily, you can read the face, whereas you can see the smile.
[00:04:02] Well,
[00:04:03] If communication is the goal and you're trying to hear someone talk it's very,
[00:04:07]hindering. So all that said, and besides that the rest of us are just trying to read the facial expressions in order to hack emotional intelligence. Here are some solutions to these enormous struggles that we're facing these days. It says the eyes don't lie and it gives it gives us several tips for
[00:04:25]reading facial expressions even when you can't see most of the face. So it talks specifically about the eyes and it says that our eyes communicate feelings in a way that is much harder to control then our mouth. So you might've noticed when someone smiles and it's a fake smile.
[00:04:45]How can you tell that it's a fake smile? It's in the eyes. The eyes squint a little bit in the sides of the eyes wrinkle. It says that maintaining a high level of eye contact is actually Implies that someone is using empathy and is interested in talking. So that's one clue you can keep in mind.
[00:05:06]And another one is that if someone's looking downward, that is either an indication that they're lying. Or that they're that they're dealing with an intense emotion. So don't just assume that because they're looking down, they're lying. But assume that if they're looking down a lot, that something is important to pick up there.
[00:05:27]There's something going on and you can ask someone. I would recommend if you notice they're looking down a lot and you don't know what's going on, ask them, Hey, it seems like something's going on here. What, what can I do for ya? Or ask is there something happening here that I should know about?
[00:05:42]Or you can even say I'm having a hard time reading you right now. What are you feeling? You can be very overt and direct in the questions that you ask don't be afraid. Another way to do it is to say, Hey, I'm working on my emotional intelligence and , because we're all wearing masks.
[00:05:56] This presents a challenge for me. And I was wondering if you can just help me understand what you're feeling right now. You can ask these questions.
[00:06:03] Back to the article, they talk about happy versus sad, right? And they actually go through several emotions. This is the part I wanted to read to you.
[00:06:11] As note above, happy eyes have a distinctive appearance. They crinkle at the outside corners, as I mentioned as the result of your cheeks, pushing them upward. So even if you can't see the cheeks you're going to see that. Outside corners of the eyes, crinkling, sad eyes, droop, and the eyes themselves seek less interpersonal engagement.
[00:06:33] They're going to be looking at you less giving them a blank or dull appearance and goes on. Surprise you don't need to see another person's mouth wide open to know they're surprised. You really. Just need to look at their eyes and when their eyes are open more open, wider, that can indicate surprise.
[00:06:55] So I've noticed that as I've tried to pay more attention to. How wide someone's eyes are that surprise can come at many different points in a conversation. They could be surprised that you're telling them a funny story that has this this turning point that they didn't expect and their eyes get.
[00:07:15] They get wide. , if your just telling a story then and it's not a risque story is not inappropriate for work. For sure if you know that, and you've checked this story, you in your mind, or as someone who would know if they're just following a normal story, then that can cause surprise.
[00:07:30]And getting used to seeing that and noting that. Is really important. Now, when you give somebody bad news or you tell somebody a fact that you're reporting in a meeting and they get surprised and you didn't think they're going to be surprised, that's, when it's really important to, to talk through that and make sure that you're touching base on it.
[00:07:49] And if you need to giving more information apologizing, coming up with a plan to move forward. So that. They feel like you've got this, they need to not be in a state of surprise. Surprise is not generally something you want when you're trying to create a solid, calm, peaceful business relationship, unless it's a happy surprise.
[00:08:13]Which is great, of course.
[00:08:15] Let's move on to anger. It says. You won't see someone's nostrils, flaring, or lips flattening into a hard line when they're wearing a mask properly. And for me, that's something I really look for is like when those, when someone has pursed lips, when their lips tighten up but of course you can't see that with mask, right?
[00:08:32] It says, but you will see their eye muscles tense up and their eyebrows draw downward. This is an activity I'm going to recommend to you. If you're listening to this and you're like what are these things? What are these look like? These emotions. There's two things I recommend.
[00:08:46] One of them is Google image search. Anger or angry face or someone who is angry, Google search these, and then look at the click on image and you can see a bunch of images of someone who is angry and you'll be able to note the different shapes of their faces and the way they're using their muscles to to contract their muscles differently for different emotions.
[00:09:09] The other thing I would highly recommend is grabbing a mirror or going into the mirror and looking into the mirror. And it says you will see eye muscles tense up and their eyebrows draw downward. So make an angry face in the mirror. And I'm literally doing this now, as I'm talking with you, make it your angry face in the mirror and then go back to neutral.
[00:09:28] And then, and watch what your face does watch the way that your muscles contract and you can look at that as an anchor point and say, okay, that's what anger looks like. I'm doing my angry face. And I'm looking at how my eyebrows draw downward. So when we talk, when we just use language to try and describe these facial movements, it doesn't help you as much when you see it.
[00:09:50] And you're able to look okay, normal. Angry face, normal, angry, face, back and forth, then that helps you recognize it more in the future. It's a very visual skill. It says with anger, moreover, their eyes themselves may stare hard at the source of the anger and the pupils motionless and glare.
[00:10:08] Unmistakable. If you can remember a time that somebody was just really angry at you, they were maybe staring at you or at the person in the room that they were angry at. They were just. They were just searing into them is a term I've heard. So think about where people are looking. If they look angry. Here's another one disgust
[00:10:30]and about disgust it says as noted above when someone's eyes narrow to a squint, as they focus intently on something, it's a reliable sign of disgust. So you can, squint your eyes down. Think about Maybe, if you listened to the last podcast, a couple of podcasts back, I did a, I've talked about changing a poopy diaper, and a lot of times just at the thought, just that somebody says poopy diapers Oh, like what muscles in your face change and contract? What positioning do your cheeks and the top of your cheeks and your eyes, your forehead take, when you think about poopy diaper. Ooh, disgusting.
[00:11:08]So make that face in a mirror, look for pictures online of disgusted faces. And remember that if you see discussed,
[00:11:16]Backtrack through the conversation and see what you may have missed that might've caused that discuss, make sure what caused it and then work to resolve it. Some of the questions that you might ask my favorite question to ask when I see a facial expression, and I think that I know roughly what emotion that was and then I'll ask, and this is a huge emotional intelligence hack right here.
[00:11:40] I'll ask here. It looks like you have that look of disgust on your face. I'm curious what. Or it looks like you had that look of disgust on your face. What were you thinking about when you made that face? I'm curious what part of our conversation you were thinking about? So that's called meta communication and asking about how you're communicating and actually asking them what they were thinking about that can help them increase their emotional intelligence via their awareness.
[00:12:09] And it can help you understand. Okay. What am I reading here? What happened in the conversation? It can help you connect the dots. Very useful question. And so back to the article there, the next thing is anxiety. Anxiety typically causes the eyes to bring blink frequently. You may feel your own eyes fluttering.
[00:12:26] If you're talking to someone in a mask whose eyes are blinking. Very interesting, very unique eye movements there. So anxiety, but blinking eyes, someone's blinking a lot. It's very very important to pick up on that because. How much anxiety do we have in our culture right now it's everywhere.
[00:12:45] So much anxiety. And so we need to do our best to decrease that anxiety for each other. And if people feel anxiety, when they're talking to you and you make them feel uncomfortable, whenever you're having a communication, whenever you're interacting with them, then that's going to withdraw from the relationship.
[00:13:02] Every time. And pretty soon that relationships can be extremely weak and it's going to be a negative experience for them to interact with you. And they'll want to cut ties. They'll want to decrease their exposure to you as much as possible, which is very unhealthy for you. Being able to get things done, make decisions and be a good team player and create positive culture where you are.
[00:13:23]So you want to identify anxiety wherever it is, and you want to be able to. Build the relationship by catching it, identifying what you're doing to create anxiety and turn that around quickly. The next one is attraction. So this is odd, but if you're meeting someone for the first time while wearing a mask, there's a lot that their eyes can tell you.
[00:13:44] One is in this of course been repeated throughout the article, but one is what their intentions are while a man may flash his eyebrows. When he's attracted to someone, it's also suggests kind intentions. So you don't specifically know what it is when they're just like. A quick raise of the eyebrows. You don't specifically Oh, he's attracted to me, but it just may mean that he has kind intentions that he's interested in a positive interaction.
[00:14:11]The raised brow, it says, according to this professor would is like saying I come in friendship. So if you look in the mirror again and do your raised eyebrows, do your raise eyebrows and put on a smile. Like you'd noticed that even if you're smiling or not, like that can change.
[00:14:31] Let's just slightly the amount of raised eyebrows, but in general, a raised eyebrow means that you're open and that you're interested in having a positive interaction. Just a side note there in American sign language when people raise their eyebrows, that typically indicates I'm asking a question now.
[00:14:51] And so it's part of their part of their grammar, if you will, is that they raise their eyebrows. I'm asking a question. So that actually, as they ask a question, they're in there indicating I'm open I'm going to be listening basically for your response. I don't know what the proper term is for American sign language.
[00:15:08] I'd forgotten. It's obviously not listening, but it's watching for the response so that they can then communicate back and they can be open to whatever's communicated back. So that, that opening up of the eyebrows, the raising of the eyebrows in indicates interest.
[00:15:26]So there you have it. Some, specific emotions, some specific things that you can watch for some specific things you can try, you can look online, look at faces that are angry. Look at faces that are surprised disgusted faces that have anxiety and and attraction.
[00:15:46] Look at those things. And think about what that looks like, maybe in the people that, think about times that you have seen these different emotions expressed on the people's faces at work that you know, experiences that you've had. And again, look in the mirror. Make these different faces at yourself in the mirror.
[00:16:05] And people might think that you look silly, maybe do it in private if you're concerned about that. But but making those faces and looking at how your own face reacts can help you be more aware of how you are showing others, your emotions and what to look for in other's faces as they show theirs, even while wearing a mask.
[00:16:29] I'm Tyler Small, and this is Hacking Emotional Intelligence.