(Bk Business) Carol Kinsey Goman Ph.D.-The Nonverbal Advantage_ Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work -Berrett-Koehler Publishers (2008)

62 The Nonverbal Advantage
So much for culture! From the jungles of Papua New
Guinea to the jam-packed streets of New York City, wherever
you go in the world, everyone shares and recognizes these
facial gestures—and relates to the emotions they portray.
Because this musculature is directly connected to the areas of
the brain that process emotion, very few people are able to
consciously control all their facial expressions.
Another finding of Dr. Ekman and his research team
at UCSF was how fleeting facial expressions—called microexpressions—often
allow the truth to slip through in brief,
unguarded moments. Lasting less than one-fifth of a second,
these flashes of expression are glimpses of a person’s
true emotional state. We don’t think before we feel. Initialreaction
expressions tend to show up on the face before we’re
even conscious of experiencing an emotion.
Reading faces is not just a matter of identifying static
expressions but also of noticing how faces subtly begin to
change. People in face-to-face exchanges watch each other’s
expressions to gauge reactions to what’s being said and
heard. Even when some words are missed, observing the
expression on a speaker’s face can help the listener follow a
conversation.
Because each emotion has unique, identifiable signals, the
face is the only system that tells us the specific emotion that’s
occurring. Currently, the federal government is funding two
major computer teams—one at the University of Pittsburgh
and one at University of California at San Diego—that are
trying to automate the Facial Action Coding System developed
by Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen, and Joseph C. Hager.
It is predicted that within a few years an automatic system
will enable computers to produce a readout of changes in
your emotional state, moment by moment.