Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, when dis­cussing dif­fer­ent Frontal Lobe, func­tions in his Wis­dom Para­dox book, adds that “Exec­u­tive intel­li­gence” includes “the abil­ity to pen­e­trate other people’s minds, and that starts with an inter­est in other people’s minds.”

What do we call a win­dow into other people’s emo­tions? A face.

Paul Ekman has con­ducted exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the power of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­sciously manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even awareness.

Based on pri­mary and sec­ondary research, he found that there are seven emo­tions expressed in the face in uni­ver­sally con­sis­tent ways:
– Sad­ness
– Anger
– Sur­prise
– Fear
– Enjoy­ment
– Dis­gust
– Contempt

Even more inter­est­ing: accord­ing to his research, feel­ings and facial expres­sions influ­ence each other. This is, not only a sad per­son will nat­u­rally look sad, but a per­son who inten­tion­ally smiles will feel more con­tent than a per­son who doesn’t.

You can read his advice on how to rec­og­nize feel­ings in order to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter, focused on doctor-patient rela­tion­ships but use­ful to every­one (includ­ing patients who may want to make sure to get their point across).

Why is this rel­e­vant for Frontal Lobe func­tions? well, as part of your decision-making, you may ben­e­fit from know­ing whether some­one is lying to you, and you can refine your guess based on 10 tips that can let you know if some­one is lying to you.

Ques­tion: from left to right, top then down, what uni­ver­sal feel­ing does each face indi­cate?
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