How to learn to read people's thoughts and feelings by facial expressions

Anyone who is interested in psychology, studies people and wants to learn how to influence them probably realizes the importance of understanding feelings, emotions and sensations. These three mental processes are reflected in facial expressions, gestures, posture and other elements of body language. A person is an open book that can be learned to read.

After reading this article and understanding what feelings, emotions and sensations are, you can take our profiling course, where you will learn to analyze people, their facial expressions, gestures, actions in order to better understand their motives and feelings. Let's study these concepts one by one and try to understand how this knowledge will help us better understand and influence people.

Feelings

Feeling is a human emotional process that reflects a subjective evaluative attitude towards real or abstract objects.

Unlike emotions and moods, the emotional processes described by the concept of “feeling” are tied to objects: they arise in relation to someone or something, and not to the situation as a whole. “I am afraid of this person” is a feeling, and “I am scared” is an emotion.

Here is a small list of feelings that we experience from time to time: love, hatred, fear, gratitude, respect, devotion, friendship.

Feelings vary in characteristics:

Intensity: This is the strength of feeling. The stronger the feeling, the stronger its physiological manifestations and influence on human behavior. By observing him, you can understand what feelings overwhelm him the most, what is important to him and what he pays attention to.
Valence: This is tone. Feelings can be pleasant, unpleasant and ambivalent. If everything is clear with the first two, then the last one may be of great interest to you. Why does a person have mixed feelings? Why? What are the underlying reasons? You will have to answer all these questions if you want to create a correct psychological portrait of a person and learn to influence him.
Content: feelings reflect various aspects, features of the meaning of objects and situations that cause them. People show feelings based on context, so observe them carefully.
Sthenicity: feelings are divided into sthenic and asthenic. The former encourage active activity, mobilize human strength (hate, love, and others). The latter paralyze or relax (for example, fear).

Feelings manifest differently among people because each person has their own set of personality traits and traits that influence feelings. The same feeling can be experienced and manifested differently depending on the emotional state a person is in at the moment. For example, the feeling of friendship can be accompanied at different times by emotions of joy, interest, resentment, shame and irritation.

Before you make a conclusion about a person, you need to observe him and try to identify both the feeling that he is currently experiencing and its underlying meaning.

How to read people's minds: understand thoughts and feelings by facial expressions.

Learning to read people's minds is easier than it might seem at first. How to read thoughts by the direction of gaze and by gestures, posture, and behavior has already been discussed in the article “Find an approach and convince.”

In what cases is it useful and interesting to understand thoughts, feelings, emotions by facial expression :

1) In everyday life to understand the thoughts and feelings of unfamiliar or complete strangers. In a situation that requires a quick and correct reaction, and, as you already know, emotional intelligence, i.e. understanding and correctly responding to the feelings and emotions of another person, through understanding one’s thoughts and feelings, is even more important in achieving success than classical IQ.

2) Young people at the stage of acquaintance and dating are very concerned about the feelings and thoughts of their loved one; it is important for them to understand the other person and what he wants. The ability to decipher facial expressions will save them from unnecessary worries and headaches. This same knowledge is also necessary for spouses, especially in the first years of marriage.

3) When communicating with a teenage child. The teenage crisis is a time of anxiety and misunderstanding, grown-up children move away from their parents and the latter are at a loss, having no idea what is going on in their heads.

4) When communicating with an infant or preschooler, who may find it difficult to explain their experiences. Young responsible parents, for whom everything is new and have little experience, are especially worried. Young mothers often tend to experience anxiety and doubt the correctness of their actions; they do not know what the newborn needs. Young fathers, if they are lucky enough to sit or walk with their baby one-on-one, are completely at a loss, not understanding what his facial expressions and behavior mean.

5) When communicating with superiors or, conversely, with subordinates. Business etiquette requires restraint. Therefore, we often do not finish our thoughts or stick to formal, unemotional communication.

6) Anyone who wants to improve their communication competence, ability to understand people, communicate easily and pleasantly.

So, “What emotions and feelings exist and what they mean” has already been written earlier. Now about how they are reflected on the face. Several pictures so that you know what you need to pay attention to and can already determine the thoughts and feelings of another person.

Pictures (photos) of facial expressions are taken from the movie “Lie to Me”.

Feeling: Happiness, in other words a state of well-being and contentment. How to recognize:

Feeling: Contempt, arrogant and humiliating disrespect. How to recognize:

Feeling: Disgust, a manifestation of extreme hostility. How to recognize:

Feeling: Anger, extreme dissatisfaction, usually developing into antagonism. How to recognize:

Feeling: Surprise at the unexpectedness of what is happening. How to recognize:

Feeling: Sadness, grief, loss. How to recognize:

How to understand by looking what a person is thinking about (you will find more detailed information in the “Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic” test

Now let’s systematize a little information about feelings and their expression.

The following picture shows emotions from left to right and top to bottom: fear, anger, disgust, joy, neutral, sadness, surprise.

The following table contains facial codes of emotional states that help to understand a person’s thoughts and feelings.

At first glance, nothing complicated; we use our ability to “read” thoughts and feelings every day, without even realizing it.

It is especially easy for women to understand the emotions of another person, due to the peculiar structure and functioning of their brain and the need to understand the state of a newborn and children without words.

Now for some interesting testing. Test and consolidate your knowledge, try to guess what feelings and thoughts are being discussed in the pictures below.

On another page you can check the correctness of your assumptions - see the answers.

The expression of a person’s face, deciphering thoughts and feelings (answers).

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Back: What are people thinking? What do your friends think of you? How good are you?..
Forward: Psychology of communication: find an approach and convince. Part II.

Emotions

Emotions are a mental process of medium duration, reflecting a subjective evaluative attitude towards existing or possible situations and the objective world. They tend to be much shorter lasting than feelings. For example, a feeling of devotion can last for years, but joy can last ten seconds.

Emotions, like feelings, differ according to the same characteristics: valence, intensity, sthenicity and content.

From a physiological point of view, an emotion is an active state of a system of specialized brain structures that prompts a change in behavior towards maximizing or minimizing this state. The emergence of emotions in a person goes hand in hand with physiological changes.

How can you recognize certain emotions? Let's look at the most common of them and find out how to understand when your interlocutor has them.

Anger

Anger arises when we cannot achieve our goal for some reason. Signs:

redness of the neck and face;
teeth grinding;
growl;
clenched fists;
leaning forward and invading your personal space;
strong, commanding poses;
general aggressive body language.

Fear, anxiety and nervousness

Fear occurs when basic needs are threatened. There are many levels of fear, from mild anxiety to blind terror. The many bodily changes caused by fear make it easy to detect.

Anxiety is an anxious state of a person caused by a disturbance in peace. In this case, the person may not be in any danger, that is, the experiences will be meaningless and irrational, or they may have a serious basis.

Nervousness is a state of strong excitability of the nervous system, leading to sharp and acute reactions to minor stimuli.

Although these three emotions are different in some ways, they have similar manifestations in physiology and body language:

cold sweat;
pale face;
dry throat (leading to lip licking);
trembling lips;
change in speech tone;
errors in speech;
trembling voice;
visible high pulse (noticeable in the neck);
sweating;
muscle tension: clenched palms, intermittent movements;
the desire to hold your breath;
fussiness.

Sadness

Sadness is the opposite of happiness and indicates a depressed state. Signs:

exhausted body;
trembling lips;
“flat” speech tone;
tears.

Confusion

Confusion may be caused by guilt or a violation of values. Signs:

redness of the face and neck;
desire to look away (unwillingness to look a person in the eyes);
grimacing;
a fake, forced smile;
changing the subject and trying to hide confusion.

Astonishment

Surprise occurs at the moment when something unexpected happens. Signs:

raised eyebrows;
dilated pupils;
open mouth;
sudden movement back.

Happiness

Happiness occurs when goals and needs are met. Signs:

general muscle relaxation;
smile (including smiling eyes);
open body language.

You can also identify the cheater based on the information provided above. For such a person, facial expressions and body language do not coincide in time with his words: they are either ahead of them or late. The head makes mechanical movements, gestures contradict the meaning of the spoken words. Therefore, to understand a person, observe and listen.

Amateur, September 20, 2020 — 13:00, link

“Matter” - producing, giving birth - is the level of movement of substance. Of course, “matter moves,” but in its own special way

The “matter” you designated is a concept; it does not exist in nature, just like “moving matter”, it is present only in our consciousness. Our world, perceived by the senses, is not a concept, but a reality, which I designate as “moving matter.” This is all that surrounds us, being concrete (as far as it is permissible to say so here) atoms, stars, planets, etc. objects, including people with their ability to think, who (objects), indeed, move “in their own special way.” These methods are the subject and area of study of specific sciences: physics, biology, cosmology and many of their branches.

“What you describe as “the ability of a living organism to perceive the physical action of an external object,” I call “materialization,” and the result of such materialization is “sensation.”

Calling the ability (of a living organism to perceive the physical action of an external object) materialization is incorrect for two reasons:

1) ability means the possibility of action, and materialization means the action itself, that is, the process; but the realization of the ability may already turn out to be such a materialization. But what do we understand by this action - materialization? If the transition is from mental (ability) to material (material), then yes. And what turns out to be material here, as a result of this transformation of ability into matter? (Here matter is no longer a concept, but a reality). Only reality itself, and precisely the physiological state of the neuron-receptor of the human sensory organ, its excitation, expressed in the formation of evoked potentials, turning into nerve impulses of the axons of neurons. If we agree that the excitation of a neuron is a sensation, then materialization is evident, the transformation of the mental (ability) into the material (reality). If we recognize sensation as information, and this is the only way neurophysiologists consider the movement of neuron excitation in the form of a “circle of sensations,” then where is the materialization, reification?

But this is only half the story: the physiological act of excitation of a material element - a neuron, is accompanied by the appearance of an immaterial, mental “thing”, an “object” (we are talking about a concept), with which only consciousness deals. But consciousness is the realm of the immaterial, the other side of reality, which has the form of a faculty that alone can deal with information about an external object. Such an object can be either material (material or radiation) or have a mental nature, for example, be the word of another person. Information about an external object has the content of the properties of this object; consciousness assigns such a meaning to it during the implementation of one of its abilities, and always taking into account the sense organ that turns out to be the main one in interaction with the external object. And in this case, we no longer have the materialization of the ability to feel, but the formation of the phenomenon of a mental “thing,” an object of thinking, which is information that arises during the interaction of a living organism with the external environment, the meaning of which is expressed in a concept.

2) the ability relates to the sphere of the mental, and materialization concerns the material side of reality, and is it legitimate to consider the transition from the mental to the material (so we consider it legitimate to say that consciousness also builds the brain), to the appearance of excitation of the receptor neuron, a physical act of interaction between living things? organism with an external object, an act of materialization. But we are talking about the physical action of an external object, and the result is also a physical action - the excitation of a material element, a neuron. And if you do not recognize the mental side of reality in the form of the ability to feel, then there will be no materialization other than simple transformations of one form of matter (not in the form of a concept) into another. And if the external object is information, in the form of another person’s word, then in this case the statement about the materialization of an immaterial thing, namely information, the meaning of which is contained in the word perceived by our consciousness, will be fair.

The color of the rainbow is determined by the “energy of light quanta” and something else...

It would be nice to define this “and something else...” more clearly. Let's say, based on the phenomenological concept of consciousness, when this something is expressed by the sensation of qualia, that is, the feeling of what is experienced

After all, Color can appear without any physical influence on the body (eye).

Yes, it can, but then a person can do not so much without the ability to feel (he will have it), but will be forced, without realizing this ability, to turn to his knowledge of Color, which can only be expressed by the concept of Color. This is where the understanding of color by consciousness will manifest itself.

. One could agree, but the movement of the hand is generated by thought with the help of amplification and control. Therefore, from the sensations that we experience, thoughts are also born that influence the physical movements of the body.

Yes, the movement of the hand (if it is not instinctive) is generated by a thought, which is not a feeling, but a concept expressing a desire, the meaning of which is the intention to “move the hand.” If this is not so, then what sense must be involved to cause the hand to move? Our desire, intention is from the realm of a person’s ability, through his consciousness, to activate not feelings, not emotions, but the muscle tissue of our body, through what expresses our desires, intentions, and they are expressed in ordinary words, that is, information, with which is the only thing our consciousness deals with. The feeling will accompany the movement of the hand, for example, with the help of vision. But this will happen in the order of interaction of a person’s visual perception with the object of observation, his moving hand.

Further: “from the sensations that we experience, thoughts are also born.” If sensation is a mental phenomenon, not material, then it can be information, which most likely should be, and then this information would be the content of these thoughts. In this case, thoughts can be born from sensations, since only through thought can consciousness turn to sensation. But thoughts cannot be born from sensations. This is the fundamental difference between sensations and concepts.

We are not allowed to feel pain from the movement of thoughts when thinking

If the movement of thought is mental, namely, it is the movement of information, then feelings have nothing to do with it. Assessing pain, that is, thinking that pain causes the person himself to suffer, is a matter of consciousness, the ability to think, but not the ability to experience. Pain is a feeling of a living organism experiencing a threat to its existence, its life. We can feel it, suffer, experience it. And we can talk about it, that is, attract consciousness, think. But we can think of pain only as a relation to the state of our body, which feels this pain.

When we “understand” something, we use “transcendence”, although we are not aware of it.

Understanding, in relation to consciousness and its “subject” of thinking, relates specifically only to this “subject”. And this object turns out to be information of a certain meaning. This “object” appears during the interaction of a living organism with the external environment, with a specific object, subject or phenomenon. The meaning is given to it by consciousness based on the properties of the object, the specific sensory organ of a person, the conditions of interaction, spatial and temporal. Understanding consists of the content of information, in its meaning, expressed by the concept of an object. And how comprehensive is the coverage of the conditions of interaction of an object with a living organism, so deep and thorough is the level of understanding of the meaning contained in the concept. The concept turns out to be a function of an unlimited number of arguments. This simultaneously allows consciousness to easily find it in the neural structures of the brain, in its memory.

And since consciousness, the human mind, is not able to grasp all the diversity of parameters and properties of an object, and the conditions for its perception by human senses, the content of the concept formed by consciousness turns out to be so uncertain. And we find ourselves unable to overcome both this uncertainty and the associated “otherworldliness” of the area of arguments of the formed concept that remains uncovered. Naturally, such an understanding of transcendence is extremely limited and incomplete; this is all that can be said here for now.

My ideas about information come from technical concepts, where information is widely used, and this concept is stable in calculations of the amount and speed of “information transfer”

NS. Information in biological organisms must have, despite the same verbal designation, a significantly different understanding from information falling into a “black hole.” Simply because of the attribution of this concept to various forms of matter. Here it is necessary to recall the definition of this concept by N. Wiener, the “father of cybernetics,” and K. Shannon, the American “engineer,” as Soviet printing media characterized this outstanding scientist and inventor in his time. “Information is information.” This designation allows us to interpret this concept as broadly as desired, and at the same time with specific narrowness. For information in living organisms, the latter is more important. This information can hardly be evaluated and expressed in bits, like information in technical systems, in libraries and in “black holes”.

From the physical representation of information, what is of interest in relation to information that can be accommodated in the human brain is the fact that the amount of information in a certain volume depends not on the volume, but on the size of the surface limiting this volume. Hence the superficial tortuosity of the human cerebral cortex. Due to the uncertainty of the initial number of factors involved in the interaction of a living organism with the external environment, the resulting information can hardly be assessed simply by bits. Most likely, if it is necessary to use a number to estimate it, then this number can be obtained most simply from the spectral density of the information signal. However, other means of mathematics will likely be used. What will be more important here is not just quantitative assessments of information, but their attribution to the source of formation of such information and taking into account those trajectories (their number) of movement of action potentials in the neural structures of the brain, the number of which is hardly limited.

And when we talk about information that arises at the moment of interaction of the living neural structure of the sense organs with objects of the external environment, changing its state from background activity to evoked activity, then the most appropriate understanding of such information is a change in the changing one. The receiver neuron is capable of changing its state under the influence of a change in the state of the source neuron, which is the receptor neuron of the sense organ. Distinguishing what is different allows us to begin to determine the content of information not only about objects of the external world, but also about any information entering neurons from other neurons of the same brain. Which is undoubtedly of paramount importance for the basic ability of consciousness, the ability to think.

Why talk about it (about transcendence)? I simply place the SECOND source of sensations there, the first is the physical impact from the movement of the substance.

Without interaction with the outside world, a living organism cannot exist. And if the first source of sensation is physical impact, then the second source should be the ability to feel this impact. But even in the ability of feeling, for example, in the photoreduction of visual perception of light, it is very difficult to detect otherworldliness, which consists in the difficult understanding of the process of perception itself. It seems that it can be overcome as knowledge increasingly penetrates into the essence of the ability to feel the energy of light quanta.

Feel

Sensation is a mental process that is a mental reflection of individual properties and states of the external environment, subjects of internal or external stimuli and stimuli with the participation of the nervous system.

The properties of sensations are as follows:

Intensity: a classic quantitative characteristic of sensations.
Modality: qualitative description of sensations. Each type of sensation has its own modal characteristics. For auditory sensations, these may be pitch, timbre, volume; for the visual – color tone, brightness, saturation; for tactile – hardness, roughness, etc.
Duration: characteristic of sensation over time.
Localization: spatial characteristics of sensations, information about the localization of the stimulus in space. In some cases (interoceptive, pain sensations) localization is difficult and uncertain.

Sensation is an instant reaction of the body to an external stimulus. For example, cold, chilly, damp, light. This immediately triggers the emotion associated with it. If your interlocutor feels cold, first of all he feels it with his senses, and then develops an emotion: surprise, anger, anxiety.

What does this mean for those studying profiling? You will be able to identify a person’s attitude to changes in the external environment. For example, understand:

Does he really like the taste of this soup?
Does this song annoy him?
How does he feel about this or that smell?

Communication is a complex process, which is mixed with body language, facial expression and a whole complex of physiological and mental manifestations. In order to learn how to read a person and influence him, it is important to understand what he experiences inside, and not what he says.

Feelings, emotions and sensations expressed on the face and body will tell you much more than words. Therefore, spend a significant amount of time to understand the intricacies of a person’s internal feelings, and this will help you understand not only him, but also yourself, which will also have a positive impact on the development of relationships with others.

We wish you good luck!

We also recommend reading:

Storytelling
How to get rid of guilt
Anger: threat or defense?
Mindsight or the path to self-knowledge
Positive emotions
Guilt
Emotions and health: how they are interconnected
How to express your emotions without becoming a manipulator
Mental processes: types and brief description
Psychological triggers
Self-control: what it is and how to develop it

Key words:1Profiling

The connection between thoughts and emotions. Take action!

In life, everything is often similar. Lots of problems, difficulties and negativity. All this easily disables us. We get scared, press ourselves to the bottom of the trench or try to escape. We hope to wait out the difficult times in safety, while others take the lead. But the problem is that there are no others. Your platoon is you. There are no other allies who can help you. You can only rely on yourself.

If your soldiers are cowards, hide, run and do not shoot at the enemy, then you have lost. You gave in to thoughts and emotions when you should have just acted. It was important to shoot at the enemy and fight with all your might, then the chances of victory are maximum.

Suppression of emotions

The belittling of an emotion comes either through the suppression of the emotion , or through the devaluation of the desire that it causes. The basis of any such belittlement is the fear that we will not be able to realize our desire, which emotions cause. As a result, we become unemotional. Sadness turns into insensitivity (the thought - “I don’t have this, and it doesn’t mean anything to me”), fear into ostentatious fearlessness (“I’m not sorry to lose this”), envy in the absence of any ambition (“I don’t need this”) , we lose the ability to show anger, and love becomes indifference.

Exaggeration of emotions can be seen in examples: sadness turns into grief, fear into panic, envy into jealousy, anger into uncontrollable anger, and love into possessiveness.