SPE 145: Blog 4: FACE It!

I decided to use my best friend. I sat face-to-face/parallel with her and asked her what she did over Spring Break. With her being my best friend and all, it was easy to pay attention and read her expressions, yet very interesting and weird/awkward when I started to noticed the shifts and changes in her face when she told me certain details of her activities during Spring Break.

Immediately when I asked my best friend how her break was I noticed her pupils dilated and an upper lid raiser happened, which told me that this topic was stimulating to her and that she had something interesting to tell me. He face did a lip corner puller and said that it was good, that she went to the beach in New Jersey and that while there stayed with some girlfriends. I asked what she had done while she was there and she said “Oh, nothing really…I just relaxed and then hung out with a friend”, and then I noticed a cheek puffer, that was an unwitting expresser. So I asked about this “friend” and instantly, like Miss America herself, she started grinning a lot, which is the frozen-affect expressor. So I asked again, “who is this friend?”.  She tried to pretend to be nonchalant, and say that he was just some guy she knew for years and they just grabbed lunch once or twice and hung out, but ultimately, it was nothing. However, when my best friend is telling me this, her face is saying the exact opposite. She was using the substitute expressor, and it was so easy to read. She wants me to believe that this “friend” is nothing more than that yet, her norming is off and her facial expressions are all over the place and contradicting what she is saying. She then jumped to the next subject and began telling me about all the things she got while shopping and I noticed that she was normal self. Her face was relaxed and moderate.

Facial expressions can tell us so much about what a person is really thinking and saying, but aren’t actually telling us. We have the tendency to try and disguise what we feel and lie in a sense, but facial expressions give us away almost every time without us even realizing. Today I learned this happens more than I thought when I asked my best friend about her Spring Break.

SPE 145: Blog 3: “People-Watching”

I decided to sit in the Academic Forum to do my “people-watching”.

I saw a guy and two girls sitting together at in an open space. The guy was sitting on the left, and a girl, who seems to be his girlfriend, was on his right, and to her right was the other girl, who seemed to be her friend. At first glance, they all seemed to be good friends, but then I seen that the girl who was sitting next to guy was in very intimate space (about 2-6 fists away). This girl showed a lot of nonverbal communication that indicated she and the guy were dating. The girl and the guy also showed that they were comfortable sitting as close as they were. When the guy would say something she would laugh, take her hand and cover her mouth a little to hide how much she was smiling, straighten her posture so that her back was arched and her left shoulder was toward him. When there was no talking they would periodically touch each other on the shoulder or arm, just because. For instance, the girl would say something and she’d take her hand and tap the guys shoulder like “aha, stop it” or “yeah, I know”. And he would put his arms around her and rub her shoulder as to say “this is my girlfriend” or to show that they liked each other.

As for the other girl, she was very casual. She sat about a handshake away from the girl, which was about 2 arm lengths away from the guy. That let me know that she may not have been as close with the guy as she was the girl, so she was trying to sit in the appropriate amount of space to even them out and show the difference in the relationship. The girl did not talk as much, which definitely let me know that she had more rapport with the girl and did not know the guy as well. Her posture was not the same as the other girl. Her posture was more so hunched, and her expressions were not as enthusiastic as the guy or the other girl that she was sitting with. It seemed as if this girl did not feel as comfortable sitting with her friend and the guy, who seemed to have been her boyfriend. By her facial expressions the girl seemed as if she was just trying to be a good friend, but would have felt more comfortable if the guy was not there.