The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

by John Gottman

  Fear

  A frightened person’s eyebrows may appear nearly horizontal, with wrinkles stretched across the entire brow. As with anger, scared people show more of the whites of their eyes as the upper eyelid is raised. The corners of their lips may be pulled to the sides of the face in a tight horizontal line.

  Happiness

  Happiness causes muscles in the cheeks to rise, and muscles around the eyes to contract. This creates wrinkles in the corners of the eyes. The corners of the mouth also curve upward, in a symmetrical smile. Eye wrinkles are the main way to tell authentic smiles from phony ones.

  Surprise

  When people are surprised, they typically raise their upper eyelids, exposing the whites of their eyes. Also, the mouth or jaw may drop open.

  Contempt

  When people feel contempt, the left corner of the lip is pulled out to the side, creating a dimple. An eye roll often accompanies contempt as well.

  Disgust

  When people are disgusted, they often wrinkle their noses as if smelling something bad. As a result, horizontal wrinkles may appear at the top of the nose between the eyes, and the upper lip may be raised.

  Illustrations by Julie Schwartz Gottman

  While the information about facial expressions presented here is based on careful observational research, it can only give you clues to the way individual people are feeling. Each person expresses emotions in his or her unique way, so the only way to find out how a person is really feeling is to engage with that person in a sensitive way and discuss his or her experience. Still, learning to recognize these basic components of emotional expression in faces can be helpful on many levels. Visual cues provide objective evidence of something we often believe is picked up through intuition. So even if you consider yourself an emotionally intuitive person, you can check your subjective perceptions against objective evidence, validating and enhancing your skills. And if you don’t have a great intuitive skill for reading emotions, conscious study of facial expressions can be a real boon. Visual cues also give you a factual, evidence-based foundation from which to explore other people’s feelings.

  Here are four points to keep in mind as you improve your ability to read emotions through facial expressions.

  1. Get familiar with a person’s face in its most neutral state. In other words, how does this person’s face appear when she’s not smiling, frowning, or stressed? Then compare that to how her face changes when she’s responding to various emotional stimuli. How do her facial muscles react when you think she’s happy, sad, scared, or surprised? How do your impressions compare with the information you’re learning about emotional expression? As you consider these questions, don’t be afraid to check out your impressions with the person you’re observing. That’s where real emotional communication happens. It’s enriched by questions like “How are you feeling right now?” or statements like “It looks like you’re angry [sad, disgusted, happy, scared, etc.]. Am I right?”

  2. Keep in mind that people often feel more than one emotion at once. When this happens, you may see a confusing mixture of feelings on a person’s face. Their mouth may be smiling, but their eyes look sad. Or you may see a split-second expression of rage in the midst of a much longer expression of sadness—a blend that’s quite common among people who feel depressed.

  People may also present a mixture of expressions when they are trying to conceal their feelings. Imagine, for example, the stressed-out “courtesy clerk” whose job requires a constant smile. She may keep her lips and cheeks turned up for eight hours a day, but her eyes defy any emotional involvement. And if she’s having a particularly bad day, you’re likely to read her anger and tension in her brow as well.

  Here are three clues to whether a person’s smile actually reflects happiness:

  • Raised cheeks and compression or wrinkles around the sides of the eyes, where “crow’s-feet” typically appear.

  • A symmetrical smile. Manufactured smiles tend to be lopsided, with left-handed people smiling more strongly on the right side and right-handed people smiling more strongly on the left side.

  • Right timing. Real smiles usually come on fast, are held for a longer period of time, and then fade in an irregular way.

  If these clues are absent, the smile you see is probably a posed or “unfelt” smile—the type that photographers get when they tell people to “say cheese.”

  3. Don’t misinterpret permanent physical features as fleeting emotional expressions. A person whose mouth continually turns down at the corners, for example, may have inherited this physical feature from his mom and his grandfather before that. At first glance, the feature may seem to indicate that he’s always sad. But as you get to know him better, you realize that’s just the natural shape of his mouth. He can be feeling perfectly chipper and still look a bit despondent to those who don’t know him well.

  There was a time in the late nineteenth century when people believed in the pseudoscience of physiognomy, which held that certain facial features revealed truths about a person’s character. A high forehead, for example, was supposed to be a sign of natural intelligence, or thin lips meant a person was innately anxious. Such ideas have no scientific merit and were disproved long ago. Rather than focusing on permanent features, it’s more important to watch how a person’s face changes when he’s responding to various emotional stimuli. Does the left corner of his mouth move slightly to the side in an expression of contempt? Do his eyes suddenly widen because he’s surprised?

  4. Take time to look. Skilled observation takes vigilance, especially considering that most meaningful facial expressions happen fast. In fact, valuable information is often gleaned through actions that psychologists call “micro-expressions”—flashes of feeling that may last just a fraction of a second, but may contain emotional data that the person would rather hide. Even the more common and purposely shared facial expressions only last up to ten seconds. So you’ve got to be watching closely or you’ll miss these displays.

  At the same time, people have lots of reasons not to look too closely at one another’s faces. In many cultures, including those of the United States and Britain, people consider a constant gaze, or staring, to be an invasion of another person’s privacy. So unless you’re feeling particularly bold or aggressive, you don’t do it.

  In some societies, it’s considered impolite to look directly at a person of higher status. When I worked with Pima Indians in Arizona, for example, I learned that a young person would not look directly at an older person; it’s considered disrespectful. Also, when two men in that culture stare at each other, it’s thought of as a challenge and can lead to a fistfight.

  Many people avoid looking at one another too closely because they don’t want to bear the burden of what they might find out. They may ascertain, for example, that the other person is depressed or lonely, needy or afraid, and they don’t want to take the trouble to help.

  People raised in abusive environments may avoid looking at others’ faces because they associate such intimacy with getting hurt.

  Some people don’t look at one another because they want to maintain power and control. During conversation, the speaker typically looks into another’s eyes as a sign that he or she is willing to give up the floor. But if the speaker doesn’t want to stop talking, she simply avoids eye contact. As long as the speaker’s eyes are averted, she can’t be expected to know that another person wants some air time. She’s able to control the floor and the conversation.

  The problem with not looking, of course, is that it limits the exchange. It’s hard to connect with the people you’re speaking to unless you look into their faces. Eye contact with the listener reveals how that person is reacting emotionally to what you’re saying. Is he interested? Entertained? Angry? Surprised? Scared? Does she agree with you? Do his facial expressions and other body language tell you that he respects what you’re saying, that he understands? In a face-to-face conversation, we can’t be sure of any of this unless we
look at one another.

  Through careful observation, we can tell whether two people are aligned in their feelings or just pretending to be. For example, a couple I recently saw in therapy was having considerable conflict over disciplining their teenage son. The husband felt his wife was too permissive and forgiving, while the wife felt her spouse was much too harsh and restrictive. The problem came to a head when they caught the boy and his girlfriend secretly smoking pot in their home, breaking a rule the boy had agreed to. The husband said they both felt the same way about the episode: “He violated our trust and we’re mad.” His wife nodded in agreement. But as the pair continued to talk about the episode, I noticed a subtle difference in their facial expressions. The husband was pressing his lips together in a way that said he was indeed primarily angry. And although the wife’s nod said she was angry, too, the emotional expression she wore on her brow revealed something else. In fact, the inside corners of each eyebrow were lifted up in a classic and intense expression of grief, using what’s called “Darwin’s grief muscle.”

  When I told them that I observed this difference in their feelings through their expressions, they were surprised. But soon the wife started to acknowledge, for the first time, her sense of loss. She had held this image of her son as an innocent, carefree boy, and now all of that was changing. She expressed this to her husband and he said he understood, but he added that this wasn’t the way he felt at all. In his heart, all he could feel was duped, put upon. He felt that his son had taken advantage of all the privileges they had afforded him and he was returning their favor with nothing but disrespect.

  Being able to see and acknowledge the differences in their feelings didn’t solve the conflict for the couple, but it was a start. And the evidence that brought their differences to the surface was the expressions they wore on their faces. In this way, an objective examination of facial expressions can reveal emotional truths that people won’t or can’t admit, even to themselves.

  Paying closer attention to facial expressions may feel a bit awkward or contrived at first. That’s because it requires you to do many things at once. You must remind yourself to keep looking at the mechanics of facial expression at the same time you’re trying to carry on a “normal” conversation—one in which you feel more comfortable focusing on what’s being said rather than on how it’s being expressed physically.

  When I was in graduate school and first learning Ekman and Friesen’s rather complex system for observing and codifying facial expressions, I used to practice my observation skills everywhere I went. I would walk around campus, noticing more angry expressions than I wanted to see. And conversations with my girlfriend at the time were particularly hard.

  “Stop staring at my brow!” she would say. Or, “Stop looking at my mouth.”

  “But that’s where most of the emotional information is,” I’d reply.

  “No, that’s not true,” she’d argue. “Everything you need to know is in my eyes. Look into my eyes!”

  Well, that was the myth. In truth, I was learning to find subtle clues to her emotional world all over her face—in her eyes, her brows, her cheeks, her lips, her chin. It was all so exciting to discover—and so distracting! Eventually, however, my skills improved and I began reading emotions in a less obvious way. It became automatic.

  Your skills can improve over time, as well. And once they do, looking for emotion-revealing cues will become second nature to you, requiring less and less effort. You see a certain contour on your brother’s mouth, or a compression of your sister’s brow, and you won’t have to stop and think, “What does that mean?” Instead you’ll automatically identify the emotion, and you’ll do so with less hesitation or self-doubt. You’ll see it as a signal to tune in to their perspective, to find out what’s up. You may even catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror one morning and notice an expression of fear, anger, or sadness “leaking” through your composure. “What is this about?” you can ask yourself. “What can I do right now to get more centered, more prepared for the day ahead?”

  Exercise: Log Your Observation of Facial Expressions

  You can use your Emotion Log to document your observations about the way emotions appear in facial expressions. Over time, these observations will help you to grow in awareness of the way people use their faces to bid for emotional connection and respond to other people’s bids.

  Below are several questions to consider as you write in your log. For this exercise you may want to think about a particularly powerful or difficult interaction you’ve had with an important person in your life over the past several days. Write down your impressions of that person’s facial expressions, or your own, during that incident.

  • What interesting facial expressions have you noticed recently?

  • Who wore the expressions?

  • What did they look like? (Make simple sketches, if you’d like. Or clip pictures from newspapers or magazines that show various emotions.)

  • What did these expressions tell you about the way this person was feeling?

  • Were you aware of people responding to your facial expressions? What did you notice?

  Reading Movement and Gestures

  Although facial expressions are usually the first place we look for emotional information, feelings can be detected as well in the way people use other parts of their bodies. A swift, downward hand-chop can indicate a speaker’s passion, for example. A shrug of the shoulders shows when somebody is feeling confused or helpless. Some social scientists have suggested that while the face can tell you what people are feeling, it’s the body that reveals just how strong those feelings are.

  Researchers have observed, for instance, that people who feel extremely tense tend to fidget, shifting positions often and touching themselves on the nose, chin, or mouth. Some psychologists have suggested that such self-touching subconsciously imitates the calming action of being stroked by a parent or lover. But for the observer it’s also a sign that this person is anxious. It may even be a sign that he or she is trying to deceive others.

  People sometimes communicate their lack of interest in one another through gestures. The sociologist Erving Goffman identified a series of behaviors that indicate when people are “away”—that is, not engaged with those around them. They touch their own faces with their hands, for example, usually covering the mouth. They bite their lips or the insides of their cheeks. They start manipulating “props,” such as their own hair, beard, glasses, or a pen. Such distracted behavior sends the message that whatever others are saying or doing, it’s not very stimulating.

  Posture can also reveal emotions. In fact, when I furnished one part of my observational research lab, I purposely chose chairs that were slightly uncomfortable so that my study participants felt compelled to readjust their positions every few minutes. With each shift, I got a new opportunity to observe people using their spines, shoulders, legs, and arms in positions that expressed how they were feeling in the moment. When a wife gets irritated with her husband, for example, she might turn her back to him slightly. And even though she keeps her face pointing politely ahead, her hips, knees, and feet may turn away—as though she’s subconsciously getting ready for her escape.

  Crossing your arms across your chest during a conversation is another common emotional cue. It may tell observers that you’re dissatisfied or opposed to what’s going on. Cross your legs or draw your knees tightly together, and you intensify the message that you’re closed to participation or influence.

  An open posture—in which you sit with your arms relaxed, your legs slightly apart, and your body tilted a little forward toward your conversation partner—gives just the opposite message: You respect this person and you want to offer your full attention. Adopt this position and you communicate that you’re open to influence, you’re available for interaction.

  You can also express affiliation by copying the posture of the person with whom you’re speaking. You may be sitting with a good friend at opposite en
ds of a sofa, for example, when you notice that you’ve adopted exactly the same position. Your back is turned in the same way. You’re holding your shoulders, arms, legs, and hands at exactly the same angle. While this kind of mirroring often happens subconsciously, you can also do it intentionally, quietly mimicking another person’s posture as a way to build rapport.

  Even small babies are sensitive to posture cues. Studying interactions between parents and their three-month-old infants, the psychologist Elizabeth Fivaz Depeursinge found that body position made an important difference in how long babies would stay engaged with their moms or dads. Babies whose parents sat with their hips aligned toward them would play happily for longer bouts than babies whose parents sat with hips swiveled away.

  How closely we stand or sit next to one another also sends an emotional message. When you feel affectionate or sexually attracted to another person, getting physically close is typically a pleasant experience. But if somebody steps into another person’s personal space without acceptance or permission, reactions may range from slight irritation to rage. Videotaped studies have been conducted of people at parties, for example, where an experimenter purposely crowds an unwitting guest. By consistently standing just a few inches too close (according to American standards), the experimenter can back the other guest across an entire room. When guests are interviewed about their impressions after such interactions, they typically describe the experimenter as interesting, but much too aggressive.

  How close is too close among people who aren’t on intimate terms? This sense of personal space differs considerably from one culture to the next. People from the Middle East represent one end of the spectrum. It’s not unusual, for example, to see public vendors in Arab countries standing nose to nose as they transact business. But people from North America and Great Britain prefer a lot more room—three to five feet between strangers, and one and a half to three feet among friends. I’ve sometimes heard this U.S./British preference described as “cocktail party distance” because it’s approximately equal to the space created by two people standing face to face with forearms stretched out from the waist, as if they were holding drinks.