Facial Expressions: What can you learn about a person by just looking at their face?

Richard Muller
Yes, unless that person is a top actor or a top poker player, or a top politician.

I've discussed this at some length with Paul Ekman, the modern expert (and the inspiration for the TV series "Lie to Me"). All of us make inadvertent micro expressions, that other people read. Some people are extremely good at it. Ekman told me that he could easily find an expert by going to a local police station and asking for their "best interrogator." Such a person was invariably someone who could tell when a person was telling the truth or not. Such people really do exist.

Ekman himself had become an expert, not by instinct, but by study and self-training. Yet, he said, he could not successfully judge professional poker players. They were the best he had met at both reading the faces of others, and hiding their own. The very best not only hid their own, but gave false signals to others to mislead them. Their "tells" were extremely subtle, since they were competing with other experts at reading micro expressions. I immediately was confirmed in my prior decision not to play cards for money.

A really good movie actor takes advantage of these micro expressions to convey to an audience innermost (but in this case false) feelings. The audience doesn't even know why the actor is so compelling, because we are not trained to pick up these expressions consciously. This is why there has always been advice (especially to young women) to avoid dating actors. They can too readily mislead you about their feelings.
I recommend the movie Birdman in which actors are playing actors; look at the skill they use when they are portraying an actor acting, to make you realize that they are just acting, but when they are not acting as if they are acting, they use their full skills to make you forget they are acting. (I hope you can follow that!) [Spoiler alert] The one exception in this movie is when Riggan (played by Michael Keaton) talks about how his father abused him; he uses all of his acting skills, without holding back, and as a result not only is Mike convinced (played by Edward Norton), but so are we.

Recognizing the skill of professional actors led me to a temporary conviction that professional actors should not be allowed to be politicians. When I suggested this as a law, my wife pointed out the flaw. Many of the best actors never become actors; they go right into politics. I'm currently reading the wonderful book Dreadnought by Robert Massie, and he is describing how Bernhard von Bulow, German chancellor before WWI, exploited his skill at this.

There is a famous quote, whose origin is actually not settled (attributed to every famous humorist in history), that the key to success is the ability to fake sincerity.

单从观察人的面部，你能得出什么？ 03:33 Share

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单从观察人的面部，你能得出什么？