Courtesy of Paul Ekman, copyright 2003                


ABOUT FACE: Eve Ekman, the daughter of psychologist Paul Ekman, is an accomplished facial mimic like her father. Here she demonstrates the seven major categories of facial expressions. Top row, from left to right: Fear, anger, happiness, contempt. Bottom row: surprise, disgust, and sadness. True anger is difficult to fake because most people cannot narrow the outer margins of their lips properly. True fear is hard because the eyebrows must be raised and drawn together simultaneously.

Chances are, you’re not very good at faking a smile. You can raise the corners of your lips into a neat grin—as one does for the camera—and you can probably tighten your eyelids a bit to enhance the effect. But unless you’re amused, excited, grateful, relieved, or just plain happy, you probably can’t pull your cheeks up and your eyebrows down to form a smile that looks genuine. No more than one in 10 people can voluntarily control the outer orbicularis oculi, the muscles surrounding the eye sockets, with that much precision.

Paul Ekman has spent 40 years watching thousands of people try. An emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at San Francisco, Ekman is a world authority on facial expressions. He is also extraordinarily skilled at faking them. In the course of cataloging more than 10,000 human expressions, he has taught himself to flex each of his 43 facial muscles individually. He can even wiggle his ears one at a time. “If only they had an Olympic event for facial athletes,” he says.

Ekman may never win a gold medal, but he has no shortage of admirers. In recent years, as the war on terrorism has escalated, he and his colleagues have taught hundreds of police officers, judges, airport security officers, and FBI and CIA agents to size up their suspects and to read clues in their facial expressions. He is now an adviser for the Department of Defense, which is developing computer technology that can scan and analyze facial movements on  videotape.                            

Charles Darwin was convinced that facial expressions don’t vary from culture to culture, but by the 1950s most social scientists had come to believe the opposite. To see who was right, Ekman traveled to the highlands of Papua New Guinea in 1967 and visited the Fore people, who had never been exposed to movies, television, magazines, or many outsiders. When Ekman showed the Fore photographs of faces with various expressions, they interpreted them exactly as Westerners would. A sad face, for instance, made them wonder if the person’s child had died.

Similar studies by other scientists have since shown that facial expressions across the globe fall roughly into seven categories.

SADNESS: The eyelids droop as the inner corners of the brows rise and, in extreme sadness, draw together. The corners of the lips pull down, and the lower lip may push up in a pout.

SURPRISE: The upper eyelids and brows rise, and the jaw drops open.

ANGER: Both the lower and upper eyelids tighten as the brows lower and draw together. Intense anger raises the upper eyelids as well. The jaw thrusts forward, the lips press together, and the lower lip may push up a little.

CONTEMPT: This is the only expression that appears on just one side of the face: One half of the upper lip tightens upward.

DISGUST: The nose wrinkles and the upper lip rises while the lower lip protrudes.

FEAR: The eyes widen and the upper lids rise, as in surprise, but the brows draw together. The lips stretch horizontally.

HAPPINESS: The corners of the mouth lift in a smile. As the eyelids tighten, the cheeks rise and the outside corners of the brows pull down.