WHEN listening to or looking at each other, most people focus on the lower part of the face. However, if the person’s true feelings are “leaked” to the observer, they are more likely to appear on the upper face and could easily be missed. Studies have also shown that the lower portion of the face (nose, lips and cheeks) is more active than the upper face (eyes, brows, and forehead) when individuals engage in deceitful intentions.

Perhaps the adage ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’ may be correct because humans learn in early childhood to manipulate facial emotions to make them appropriate to a given social situation which, in time, allows them to engage in deceitful behaviour. For example, a person who is angry with his/her superior may display a social smile rather than an angry scowl when asking for a raise.

To better understand the brain’s recognition and processing of facial manifestations of emotion, the researchers briefly showed 30 people line drawings of a human face displaying different emotions on the upper versus the lower face, including happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and neutral. Participants viewed the drawings in either or left visual field and most often identified the lower face emotion, regardless of the visual field. When subjects were instructed to focus on the upper face, they did so best when pictures were shown to their left visual field (processed by the right side of the brain). However, most continued to identify the lower facial emotion when showing viewing in their right visual field (processed by the brain’s left side).

Recognition of emotional displays on the lower face appears to be processed by the brain’s left hemisphere as part of the social- or learned-emotional system. In contrast, emotional displays on the upper face appear to be processed in the brain’s right hemisphere as part of the primary or inborn emotional system. These findings help us to gain a better understanding of the neurological basis for effective communication, which
will increase a physician’s ability to assess how diseases, such as stroke and dementia, alter these functions.

People may naturally focus on the lower face to aid in speech comprehension during a conversation, especially in noisy environments. Social conventions may also play a role as many cultures consider it unacceptable to look someone directly in the eyes-the “evil eye” belief. This may be interpreted as aggressive or threatening behaviour, similar to those observed in some animal species.

There is a natural curve starting in early childhood for acquiring the skills to read facial displays of emotion. We certainly can train ourselves to pay more attention to upper facial displays, which help us read a person’s true emotional state. For example, judges can learn to tell if a person may be guilty of a crime by reading the facial expression of that person when the accuser first confronts him or her in court. However, this ability can have a downside because of social conventions.