Reading emotions:

Facial expressions are not a foolproof guide to our emotions.
When experiments have shown pictures of people in different emotional states to a range of men and women, less than half of them have accurately guessed what the other person was feeling. Women are better than men at reading emotions. In some research, men show no better rate of identifying emotion than would happen by random chance.

Most people expect to read emotions on the face, but this is the area that can be controlled. Emotions does link with facial expression but we can also deliberately try to distinguish what we are feeling by changing our expression. Our face can often lie more effectively than the rest of the body.

If you are trying to guess what someone else is feeling, look at the whole body. The lower half of the body is a particularly good signaller lf emotions because we often forget to mask it. It takes longer for us to react in our limbs to a change of mood than it does in our face, but as most people do not try to control their legs and feet, they become a good place to start looking for clues.

Sometimes body changes are uncontrollable by us unless we are able to change our emotional state from the inside. The body may react to fear or anger or embarrassment by changing temperature or colour. Deep feeling show up in the form of blushing, sweating or blinking, and even in the shallowness and depth of breathing.
Once you become alert to the full range of deliberate and voluntary signals that people make, you will become very adept at picking up changes in body language.



Must know:
- body language is very effective for understanding ourselves.

- Watch your on reaction in conversations.

- Why are you adopting a closed stance? Who are you relaxed with? What is it about the other person that is making look away?

- If you change you gestures, what happens to your attitude to the other person? If you open up do you feel friendlier towards the other person? If you closed down, do you feel less friendly?

(ASK YOURSELF)


written byCarolyn Boyes







Best wishes
Eva