Reading the Face

Meredith Levinson’s article at the CSO web site gives some good tips on reading facial expressions. An excerpt:

While facial expressions can be hard to decipher because they're fleeting (lasting anywhere from less than one-half of a second to three seconds) and because people often try to conceal them, they are in fact the clearest indicator of what someone is feeling, says Ekman. "The face is the only system that will tell us the specific emotion that's occurring," he says. That's because each emotion has unique, identifiable signals in the face. Emotions manifest themselves in facial expressions because, says Ekman, it became useful over the course of human evolution to let others know when we sense danger. Facial expressions have since become automatic. Because each emotion has unique signals in the face, facial expressions are more reliable indicators of a person's emotional state than body language.