When faces tell too little

Choose the right words, say them clearly, and people will understand you. Simple. Many of us think communication is mainly about words. Over the years, however, I have become less convinced, as some of the most interesting conversations I have witnessed seem to have taken place without anybody saying very much at all.
I started thinking about this while watching a meeting. Nothing dramatic happened. A proposal was presented, and the room quickly filled with smiles and nods. Everything looked positive. But, for a brief moment, before the smiles settled into place, a few other expressions appeared. One person looked surprised. Another looked worried. A third seemed to be calculating what the proposal might mean for their workload. The moment lasted no more than a second, then disappeared. The meeting carried on as normal. Still, I found myself wondering what I had just seen.
Microexpressions. That is what psychologists call these brief flashes. The name sounds complicated, but the idea is simple. Sometimes our emotions arrive before our manners catch up. Before politeness takes over, surprise may appear. Before somebody says, 'That is wonderful news,' another reaction may briefly show itself and then disappear. Scientists still debate how much these expressions can tell us, but most of us have experienced moments when our feelings arrived before our carefully prepared response. The face, it seems, does not always wait for permission.
Human beings have always wanted to know what other people are thinking. The possibility that faces might offer a shortcut is naturally appealing. After all, we have always tried to 'read between the lines,' looking for the real message hidden beneath the obvious one. However, we are often far more confident than accurate. We misunderstand emails, misread text messages and spend half a day wondering whether a full stop in a WhatsApp message means annoyance or nothing at all. Even so, many of us still believe we can understand a stranger's thoughts after a two-second glance.
Parents may be the most confident detectives of all. As a parent myself, I understand the temptation. Many mothers and fathers believe they can instantly spot dishonesty. Their children often believe exactly the same thing about them. Family life may be a long-running competition between people who all think they are excellent investigators. Americans even gave us the expression 'poker face' for somebody who can hide emotions completely. Most of us like to think we have one. The evidence suggests otherwise.
Emotions rarely arrive one at a time. I remember dropping one of my children off for an important new stage in life. I felt pride, excitement, worry and a little sadness all at once. If somebody had asked me exactly how I felt, I would have struggled to answer. Faces are often left with the impossible task of showing several emotions at the same time. Then there is another challenge. We are not always objective observers. Two people can watch the same interaction and reach completely different conclusions. One sees confidence while another sees arrogance. One notices sincerity while another senses hesitation. Culture adds another layer. Some societies value emotional restraint. Others encourage open expression. Even within the same family, people can be very different. Most of us know somebody who wears his heart on his sleeve and somebody else who could win the lottery and respond by asking whether the numbers have been checked properly.
As if understanding people was not already difficult enough, technology has now joined the effort. Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being trained to analyse facial movements and estimate emotional states. I already receive enough advice from software and am not entirely convinced that I need a device informing me that I look frustrated at 2:43 in the afternoon. There are situations, of course, where this technology may genuinely help. Healthcare professionals often work with patients who struggle to explain pain or anxiety. Teachers spend much of their time looking at faces and trying to work out whether a lesson is making sense. In these situations, facial expressions can provide useful clues. The important word, however, is clues. A clue points towards an answer; it is not the answer itself.
I believe that is the real lesson hidden inside all this. We spend much of our lives trying to understand other people and an equal amount of time trying to be understood ourselves. Faces help. Words help. Experience helps. None of them, though, gives us complete access to another human being. There is always a gap between what somebody feels, what they show and what we think we have seen. Communication has always been imperfect, and that could be a good thing. The face may occasionally leak a clue, but thankfully it still keeps enough secrets for conversation to remain necessary. If every thought could be read as easily as a road sign, there would be very little left to ask, very little left to discover and far fewer surprises in life.