AbdulSalamOne Basic lesson of body language science is titled “How to spot a fake smile.” This blog is all about making you capable of spotting a fake smile quickly. Before heading to the key points, let me tell you a story for context.
One of my close friends is a PR Manager at an MNC. He meets dozens of people every week and has thousands of contacts on his phone. Last week, I was sitting in his office where we were meeting people for a joint venture. We have scheduled 7 meetings in three hours regarding our project. When the first person entered the office for a meeting, my friend greeted me with a big smile and a firm handshake. We had a short meeting. As he left, I asked him, “You don’t like this person very much.” He was a little shocked to listen to that. He smiled and said, “How did you know that”? I smiled back and said, “why do you often forget that I am a psychologist.”? He laughed, and later we continued our second meeting and so on.
Out of those seven people, He met only people with a genuine smile and pretended to be happy with the other five. After ending all the meetings, we had a great lunch. During Lunch, he asked me again how I knew about his relations with the people. I said, “I spotted your fake smile.”
This Blog will tell you about the science behind spotting a fake smile and how you can know that either people are genuinely happy or is he just pretending to be happy to meet you. Let’s Start Our Discussion on “How to Spot a fake smile.”
1-Wrinkles:
The most subtle way of identifying a fake smile is to look at the eyes. When we smile genuinely, it produces wrinkles around the eyes, making our smile more prominent. This is the #1 way of “How to spot a fake smile”. So, the next time you meet someone new, look into his eyes to see whether he is really happy to see you or just pretending to be.
2-Pair Reading
The second thing to understand while learning “How to Spot a Fake Smile” is reading body language in a pair. After looking at his eyes, look at his mouth. Fake smiles pull back only the mouth, but the natural smile pull back both the mouth and eyes.
3-Intensity
Do you know that children start smiling by the fourth week and laughing starts by the fourth or fifth month? Anyways, this was just the side information. The third key point in “How to Spot a Fake Smile” is measuring the Intensity of a smile. Research by Paul Ekman showed that when people lie deliberately (primarily men), they smile less than they usually do. Ekman believes this is because liars realize that most people associate a smile with lying and intentionally decrease their smiles.
4-Quickness
A liar’s smile comes more quickly than a genuine smile. This is the fourth key point of “How to spot a fake smile.” A liar will always hold his smile longer than usual.
5-Facial Changes:
Scientists developed a system called Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to identify genuine and fake smiles. Professor Paul Ekman of the University of California developed this system with his fellows. But as we don’t have access to FACS, let’s do it manually. The fifth key point of “How to spot a fake smile” is observing the face of the other person. A false smile appears stronger on one side of the face than the other. This happens because both sides of the brain attempt to make the smile appear genuine.
FUN FACT: Smugglers Smile Less than Most People
Abdul Salam is a psychologist, Author and Udemy Instructor. I have diverse Professional experience in teaching, training and counselling. From past 7 years, I am contributing to the literature of positive psychology, self-help, personal development and student affairs. In this journey I have published over a dozen books on above mentioned topics and many are still in process. I have 9000+ Students on Udemy which are learning useful things from my courses. I am regularly writing blog on www.abdulsalamspeaks.com and here is the list of my publicly available resources
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