# Micro Expressions

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/micro-expressions/842955>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 3, 2019, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/micro-expressions/842955 "2019-11-03T16:58:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![molten](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ec9cab/32.png) [@molten](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/molten)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/micro-expressions/842955/1 "2019-11-03T16:58:26Z")

</div>

I am confused about the premise here. The claim is there are only 7 social emotions. Do most people not have more complicated non social feeling or do these not show on their face?

How would being able to pick up on 7 out of 1,000,…s be helpful?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/micro-expressions/842955/2 "2019-11-03T17:58:37Z")

</div>

Do you have any sort of a link to a source that makes the claims you’re attempting to explicate here? Because your OP is spare on any sort of detail that might make a factual answer possible.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/micro-expressions/842955/3 "2019-11-03T18:01:12Z")

</div>

_What_ claim? Who’s making this claim, and where?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/micro-expressions/842955/4 "2019-11-03T19:17:13Z")

</div>

> [@molten](#):
>
> I am confused about the premise here. The claim is there are only 7 social emotions. Do most people not have more complicated non social feeling or do these not show on their face?

Without your cite, that runs counter to how I’ve seen the 7 microexpressions described. Take a look at a different characterization from this [cite](https://www.scienceofpeople.com/microexpressions/)

> [@](#):
>
> There are seven universal microexpressions: disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and contempt. They often occur as fast as 1/15 to 1/25 of a second. The face is the best indicator of a person’s emotions. Yet, it often is overlooked. Dr. Paul Ekman, whose research is the premise of the show Lie to Me, has done groundbreaking research on decoding the human face. He has shown that facial expressions are universal. In other words, people in the US make the same face for sadness as indigenous people in Papa New Guinea who never have seen TV or movie characters to model themselves after. He also found that congenitally blind individuals, those blind since birth, also make the same facial expressions, even though they never have seen other people’s faces. **Ekman has designated seven facial expressions that are the most widely used and easy to interpret.** [

It’s not that there are only 7 social emotions that are expressed on the face. There are seven that are both universal and relatively easy to interpret. That makes focusing on those micro-expressions useful in a way that trying to interpret other expressions is not.