Facial displays

Have you ever thought that your own facial displays are partly learned and partly inborn? Using the facial displays in the right situation is very important especially in one’s workplace because it affects your relationships with people; and people might discriminate you because you have displayed socially unacceptable facial displays.

 




Depending on the different situations, we are taught to alter our expressions and this differs in different situations and cultures. For example, Air stewardesses are taught to smile regardless of how irritated and frustrated they are.

We intensify some emotions and de-intensify others. For example, a saleswoman who just made a major sale might intensify her positive expression by smiling more broadly and raising her eyebrows. In addition, we learn to neutralize our emotions in certain situations; such as, when we did better than our friend in a test, we would not boast about our results. Instead, we would be much more tactful around them.

Finally, we sometimes mask our emotions which is to conceal what we are really feel by displaying and showing other emotions. For example a customer service representative might express concern and care in her facial expression, when in reality she is annoyed by the customer. Another example which many of us would be familiar with would be of how the first runner-up for a beauty pageant contest would always appear joyful and rushes up to hug the winner even though she must have felt really jealous or disappointed.

 Take a look at this video of Miss America. Observe how the first runner-up reacted when Miss Wisconsin was announced as the winner.

While showing the right facial displays is important,  what and how we convey verbally is also significant in maintaining relationships with people. Therefore we should be mindful of both our facial displays and our verbal behavior in all situations.