The Art Of Face Reading

An Introduction to Face Reading:

  
  Interpretation of character and fate from the study of a person's face is called 'Physiognomy' or 'Face reading'. It is obvious that when we meet an unknown person, we try to understand his feelings by looking at his face.Your face is the mirror of your personality. Statistical results have shown that there is a strong connection between facial features and personality traits. Since thousands of years people have been trying to study the relationship between facial features and personality traits. The findings that they have reached have proven that you can judge someone's personality through his face features with a high degree of confidence.For example, you might have noticed that people who look alike tend to behave in the same way or at least have some common behavior or traits. You may have also noticed that all young babies act the same way and that all of their facial features are almost the same (Curved forehead which reflects creativity, big cheeks which reflects energy and wide eyes for sensitivity...etc).
The saying that “the face is the index of the mind” is true because we can make out the whole personality of a person through the science of Face Reading. According to this science, human face reveals all its personality traits if read by an expert face reader. Your face is just like an open book, comprising the most unforgettable and unique feature of your traits. A skilled face The saying that “the face is the index of the mind” is true because we can make out the whole personality of a person through the science of Face Reading. According to this science, human face reveals all its personality traits if read by an expert face reader. Your face is just like an open book, comprising the most unforgettable and unique feature of your traits. A skilled face reader can read each facial feature and line on a face to develop an accurate profile of its owner.Face size, lines, skin colour, spots etc. can reflect its owner's personal history, mental attitudes, intimacy needs, ethics, emotional style, and verbal communication. Roughly, if you want to know about personality of a person, it can be easily discovered through reading his or her face. 
Personology is the other name for face reading. What's more interesting about face reading or personology is that the personality/facial features relation is believed to be reversible.
 For example, if you changed your personality traits your facial features may change too over the years. You may have noticed how, after years of marriage, married couples start to look alike; this happens because their personalities come closer and so their facial features follows. 
The one thing people don't know about face reading is that it can't tell you anything about the behavior. For example i can never know that you are a shy person through face reading because that's something that you acquired as a result of your past experiences but i can certainly tell you that you are a logical thinker who prefers practical facts over intuition through face reading.

How to Read A Face:

Knowing how to read and interpret microexpressions is an essential part of understanding nonverbal behavior and reading people. Here is my brief guide to understanding the microexpression.

A microexpression is a brief, involuntary facial expression that is shown on the face of humans according to the emotions that are being experienced. Unlike regular pro-longed facial expressions, it is difficult to fake a microexpression.

There are seven universal microexpressions: disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and contempt. They often occur as fast as 1/15 to 1/25 of a second.
The face is the best indicator of a person’s emotions. Yet, it is often overlooked. Dr. Paul Ekman, whose research is the premise of the show Lie to Me, has done groundbreaking research on decoding the human face. He has shown that facial expressions are universal. In other words, people in the US make the same face for sadness as indigenous people in Papa New Guinea who have never seen TV or movies to model. He also found that congenitally blind individuals—those blind since birth, also make the same expressions even though they have never seen other people’s faces.
Ekman has designated seven facial expressions that are the most widely used and easy to interpret. Learning to read them is incredibly helpful for understanding the people in our lives. If you want to practice reading people’s faces, it is important to know the following basic expressions. I would recommend trying the following faces in the mirror so you can see what they look like on yourself. You will also find that if you make the facial expression, you also begin to feel the emotion yourself! Emotions not only cause facial expressions, facial expressions also cause emotions.

1) Surprise Microexpression:

-The brows are raised and curved
-Skin below the brow is stretched
-Horizontal wrinkles across the forehead
-Eyelids are opened, white of the eye showing above and below
-Jaw drops open and teeth are parted but there is not tension or stretching of the mouth

2) Fear Microexpression:

Brows are raised and drawn together, usually in a flat line
-Wrinkles in the forehead are in the center between the brows, not across
-Upper eyelid is raised, but the lower lid is tense and drawn up
-Upper eye has white showing, but not the lower white
-Mouth is open and lips are slightly tensed or stretched and drawn back

3) Disgust Microexpression:

-Upper lid is raised
-Lower lip is raised
-Nose is wrinkled
-Cheeks are raised
-Lines show below the lower lid
This is the expression you make when you smell something bad.

4) Anger Microexpression:

-The brows are lowered and drawn together
-Vertical lines appear between the brows
-Lower lid is tensed
-Eyes hard stare or bulging
-Lips can be pressed firmly together with corners down or square shape as if shouting
-Nostrils may be dilated
-The lower jaw juts out

5) Happiness Microexpression:

-Corners of the lips are drawn back and up
-Mouth may or may not be parted, teeth exposed
-A wrinkle runs from outer nose to outer lip
-Cheeks are raised
-Lower lid may show wrinkles or be tense
-Crows feet near the outside of the eyes
*The expressions on the left are real happiness, the ones on the right are fake happiness where the side eye muscles are not engaged. See the difference?

6) Sadness Microexpression:

-Inner corners of the eyebrows are drawn in and then up
-Skin below eyebrow triangulated, with inner corner up
-Corner of the lips are drawn down
-Jaw comes up
-Lower lip pouts out
*This is the hardest microexpression to fake!

7) Contempt / Hate Microexpression:

-One side of the mouth raises

Practice these emotions on yourself, and see if you can detect them in the people in your life.
Sometimes knowing what emotion your seeing is also just as important as an emotion you are NOT seeing. For example, if you are talking to someone about a vacation or activity you think they like, are they showing you genuine happiness? If you accuse them of cheating/breaking an office rule do they show surprise or fear? If they are not surprised, they probably knew they did something wrong and are afraid of getting caught. You can also test yourself, using this test.
The underlying importance of reading faces is that it has to be done in person, without looking down at a Blackberry or iPhone, so we have to pay attention to others. This alone helps tremendously in connecting with others and gleaning their true meaning.