Mouth and nose micro expressions

Facial micro-expressions are short, quick (last 1/25 of a second) and involuntary expressions, that occur when people try to hide their genuine emotions. However, micro expressions reveal the person’s true emotion, as a result of a conscious suppression or an unconscious repression.

For example, sometimes people try to hide sadness, so that they don´t worry the ones that care about them. In this case people try to show happiness, but there’s still an involuntary and unconsciously micro expression that reveals sadness, but due to its short duration it is difficult for others to detect.

The recognition and analysis of micro expressions is used in many different areas. It is used in patients that suffer from autism and schizophrenia in order to understand them better due to their low capability of communication. It’s also done by psychologists to help them with the diagnosis of patients with mental diseases. In criminal investigations, micro expressions recognition is also important to see if people are telling the truth, while they are being interrogated.

This post will just focus on micro expressions done by the mouth and nose.

The mouth can send many different messages due to its capability of moving just one side at a time. When someone is happy, the lips tend to go up, therefore the lips are the best thing to analyze to distinguish if the person is having positive or negative emotions. When someone is feeling sad, then the lips go down. When someone shows an asymmetric smile, meaning that just one side of the lips goes up, means that the person feels contempt, revealing lack of consideration. The lips also indicate the state of tension in which the person is. The higher the pressure done by the lips, the higher the tension. Sometimes it can be so high that the lips seem to disappear.

The nose is not as moveable as the mouth, being the messages more discrete. Anger and fear are two negative emotions, however the nose looks very different in these two situations. When someone is angry, the nose tends to wrinkle, making some folds appear between the eyes, but when someone is scared, the nose tends to be completely straight.