Microexpressions — A Complete Guide for Beginners

Boost your emotional intelligence by reading microexpressions

In this guide, you will learn how to read microexpressions on people’s faces to boost your emotional intelligence.

To be able to have deep and meaningful conversations with other individuals, it is essential to understand their emotions. You can achieve this by actively listening to their words and reading their body language and facial expressions.

Most of the time your brain automatically reads other people’s facial expressions — at least the visible, long-lasting facial expressions, the so-called macroexpressions. However, these obvious facial expressions only illuminate a small part of the emotional world of your interlocutor.

Much more exciting are the so-called microexpressions, which arise subconsciously and cannot be deliberately evoked or suppressed. They can give you valuable information about the hidden emotional world of your conversation partner and even serve as an indicator of deception when combined with other nonverbal and verbal cues.

Since microexpressions are notoriously difficult to detect, they usually go unnoticed. With some practice, however, you can teach yourself to reliably spot them. In this guide, you’ll learn step-by-step to recognize microexpressions on people’s…