KINESICS - Facial expressions including smiling

KINESICS - Facial expressions including smiling

A face is the index of heart. It is the most expressive part of the body and is also the one that is observed most by the audience. Persons‟ feelings and emotions get immediately transferred into some form of expressions on the face. Facial expressions include the parts played by head, heart, eyes, nose, mouth, and lips. Everyone, almost intuitively, recognizes the facial expressions associated with:
 Happiness
 Fear
 Surprise
 Anger
 Sadness
 Astonishment
 Bewilderment
 Contentment etc
Similarly, observers can easily detect smile, frown etc. In conjunction with nose and nostrils, ears, mouth, lips etc they are able to decipher many other expressions and movements very quickly. These thoughts, feelings, and emotions may be either positive or negative – being able to read them from the facial and related expressions, managers and leaders are able to use the knowledge to their advantage. It is said that „every face tells a story‟ and managers and leaders must learn the kinesics to grasp that story quickly and react accordingly.
The muscles of the face have a nerve center in the stem of the human brain and it contains 7,000 to 10,000 nerve cells that are spread out in different parts of the face. The facial muscles that control a smile are similar to the muscles that control posture, voice tone, and pitch, movements and expressions that are triggered by emotions from emotions of the heart (right side of the brain) or thoughts (from the left side of the brain).
Very often, facial expressions involve more than one part of the face. For example, an extremely aggressive person will have his lips closed tightly, eyes wide open, eyes and eyebrows turned down, teeth clenched and he will speak with his lips barely moving! Similarly, a defiant person will have his head and chin thrust forward, lips tensed up and pushed forward so that any person can see that he is in an angry mood.