Transcript
NARRATOR
To navigate our increasingly complex social world, we need to learn to collaborate and cooperate with one another. And that means we must learn how to understand the needs and desires of others.
GIRL
And we’re done.
[LAUGHTER]
MAN 1
One of the ways that we can read each other is through our facial expressions, which convey our emotions.
MAN 2
And we are all really good at reading the facial expressions of other people, almost to the point of being mind readers.
NARRATOR
We first learn to read six basic expressions - happy, angry, surprised, disgusted, scared, and sad, really sad.
MAN 1
But our emotions are rarely as simple as pure happiness or pure sadness. And the latest research now shows that we have 21 different facial expressions to convey how we feel. That might include happily surprised or sadly disgusted.
NARRATOR
We now think that there are many thousands of micro expressions - moments that flicker across your face involuntarily in around 1/25th of a second when you’re trying to conceal how you really feel.