Facial Expressions
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by: Rochard Wade
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Word Count: 441
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2010 Time: 1:01 PM
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Many psychologists debate on whether facial expressions show emotions or not. Most of them agree that they do. The meaning and significance of different facial expressions may vary with culture and situation. However, most of the facial expressions convey some information about a person's inner feelings.
Reading facial expressions is not difficult. A smile depicts joy while a frown means sorrow or anxiety. Sorrow can also be denoted by dropping the eyelids and by downward curve of the lips. An angry person has eyes glaring and eyebrows pulled down together. When the eyebrows are raised and eyes are wide, it denotes fear or surprise. In case of fear, the lower eyelids are generally tense. Contempt or disgust for something is shown by pulling the lips up and wrinkling the nose.
The part of the face that plays a major role in defining expressions is the eyes. Most of the time expression of the eye changes with changing facial construction. Eye expression is also important in interpersonal communication. While maintaining eye contact with your communicator is necessary for effective communication to take place, avoiding eye contact may denote rudeness or lack of interest.
There are many other facial expressions like the famous one sided or lop sided smile which means sarcasm or mockery. A wink is when one eye is closed and opened after a brief time gap. It may mean flirting or humor and is generally used when two people share a private joke in public. Winking by quickly closing and opening both eyes may mean silent encouragement or approval. Making a puppy face to get things done by pretending to be cute is another popular facial expression among friends. One does this by jutting out the lower lip and looking at the other person with sad eyes.
Facial expressions related to emotions are involuntary in nature. They are instantaneous and work on stimuli as a reaction to the emotion the person feels at a moment. Our brain has a specialized process to recognize emotions from facial expressions. When you see a person smiling or frowning, your brain instantly recognizes the expressions as those of joy and sorrow. Similarly, widening eyelids are a depiction of fear or surprise. Lowering eyelids may denote shame or respect.
Our face is capable of saying things without uttering a single word. Hence facial expression is one of the most vital modes of human communication. When chatting on Facebook one cannot see your facial expressions in person so that's where Facebook emoticons come in. Facebook chat emoticons can show exactly how you're feeling during a chat session.
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Looking to find a complete list of Facebook emoticons, then visit www.facebookemoticons.com to find all of the emoticons for Facebook chat you can use.
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