CAPS #3 - Michael Filipowski

Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication, they allow us to be able to relate to one's emotional state, they allow us to understand concepts and more so they allow us to see deception and lying in one's words. There are six basic universal facial expressions, they include: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise. There are 52 muscles in your face that allow you to not only make these six universal expressions, but thousands upon thousands of different expressions. This does not just include expressions that we can see, there are micro-expressions that occur in splits of a second that also allow one to read one's face but if you don't know what you're looking for you will miss it. These micro-expressions allow for one to hide they're feelings or deception much easier, allow for a misconception of the language of communication.

As I read an article called "People From Different Cultures Read Facial Expressions Differently" there was main thing that it talked about, miscommunication between cultures. This introduces "true complexities" to the idea that facial expressions are all universal. In the article it discusses how East Asians, when looking at facial expressions, look more at the eyes of the person they are communicating with while on the other hand Western people look more at the whole picture of the face as their guide. This allows for miscommunication between cultures because East Asians would read expressions such as fear for surprise and disgust as an anger emotion. Even though as described above as facial expressions between cultures are universal, they do not imply a miscommunication through cultural differences. 

All of my life I have had to deal with moving around 15 times within the last 20 years. Through that time I've had a lot of promises from old friends to keep in touch, meeting new people, etc. What I learned though is through the various cultures how to see from different perspectives through facial expressions and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions will interact with my future intercultural experiences because one day I hope to become an FBI Profiler. This form of nonverbal communication will help me to identity someone's habits, lies and lifestyle through the power of my eyes. 

References: 

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2009). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (5th Edition ed). New York, NY: McGraww-Hill. 

Swallow, D. (08/1). Retrieved from http://www.deborahswallow.com/2009/08/14/people-from-different-cultures-read-facial-expressions-differently/