Anger vs. happiness motion in the mouth area, was a good example of how similar movements can have meanings that are polar opposites. This should also prove the importance of being able to distinguish the slight differences between them. It is also just as important to realize that not all movements can be categorized into basic, easy to interpret feelings.
Every little curl and twitch means something different, and every combination of them together, further increases the possibilities. The reason I say this is so important is because often when first exploring the use of this skill, its common for a person to make a critical ‘error’ when trying to read the micro expressions of another person.
This isn’t because that person is an exception, or the information they’d learned was wrong or misinterpreted when you read it. Its because you don’t have all of the information.(Don’t feel bad, nobody can acquire, understand, and put to use, everything, all at once.) You probably noticed, I put the word ‘error’ in quotes just now, and that’s because the specific ‘error’ I’m talking about is completely avoidable.
For lack of better words, I’m going to call this type of error ‘filling in the blank.’ Here’s a scenario where this happens. You’ve decided that you want to try to learn to read people’s emotions through the micro expressions, and you’ve spent a little time researching how a few of the basic emotions show on the face. You’ve tested it out on a few friends, or family members with a fair amount of success and decide to have a seat at the table and give it a whirl. It doesn’t take long before you become involved in a hand where you are heads up preflop with an opponent, he 4 bet under the gun, everyone folded to you on the big blind. You are hold As Kc and decide to finish the bet and see a flop. Heres your chance! You think as you watch his face closely as the flop comes out. Nothing, not a single movement on his face. You look down and see that the flop is 7h 4h 2c, and hasn’t helped you, and you check to the raiser. He puts out a bet of about ½ pot, and you decide the flop was weak enough to call it with 2 over cards, and you look back at him to watch his face when the turn card comes out. This time you see movement. One corner of their pressed together lips curled upward(one side) for just a fraction of a second. You do a quick rundown in your head of what you learned, or researched so far.
**Here is the error** “I only saw one corner curl, but that probably doesn’t matter.” WRONG. “Well… it kind of looked like….” WRONG. (Most common} ”Curling lips in general means happy or angry.“ WRONG.
The correct, and hardest thing to do in this instance, is to recognize that you are dealing with an emotion you ARE NOT YET FAMILIAR WITH. This is literally a science and you can’t generalize the information by as I called earlier, filling in the blanks. Just to show you why, lets finish this hand using the more common, of the ‘error’ approaches listed above.
You decide its either happy or angry, and you didn’t see teeth, so you come to the conclusion, he’s happy, so that card must’ve helped him! You then look down to see a 3 of hearts. Normally a blank, but there are now three hearts on the board, and you don’t have any in your hand. You check to him, and again, he puts out a half pot bet. Now your line of thinking has changed, you think hes happy, and a bet that size is surely just trying to get value, so you fold. When you fold, you proudly turn over AK to justify your pre and post flop calls, and ability to get away from a monster hand. But right after, your opponent laughs and turns over Ax10x, also not holding any hearts. You immediately feel your stomach knot and can’t believe all the time you put in learning about facial expressions, just cost you money.
Here is what really happened. You didn’t see happy, or angry. You saw contempt, which to this point you had not come to in any of your research. Your opponent, saw that third heart, and knew there was a good possibility that his A10 was good on the flop(even though it wasn‘t), and you just called drawing.(since the rest of the board is weak numerically and you called a 4 bet raised preflop) When you check to him on the turn, he put out another ½ pot bet to see where he was in the hand.
Because if you hit comfortably, he’ll expect you to raise it, and he can get away from it. Or if you have a pair, or highish cards, and you don’t end up folding, you’ll hopefully just call, and he’ll get a bargain on the river card with you still thinking he might have something. That give him the possibility of going check check on the river to get to the showdown(where his A10 high might be good.) Or it getting checked to him on the river, and if he hits either of his cards giving him high pair, he’ll bet a 3rd time for value, which will just look like every other street, disguising it and making it hard for you to go back through the hand and figure out what hes betting that whole time, and why the highest card (on the river) didn‘t stop you. All of this thinking on his part usually happens in less than 15 seconds of that turn card coming out. This same player however, would’ve probably folded if you had led out on the turn.
Contempt is what I call a betting emotion. Because when I see it, I will almost always bet at that person when heads up, regardless of my holdings. I do this because not only is contempt easy to recognize, but there are usually only 2 kinds of decisions a player feeling this emotion will make. A desperate one, or a bad one. Usually a player who makes a desperate decision will give up if his hand doesn’t improve with the next card, and the side effects of him losing the extra money will carry over into the next hand mentally, causing a higher degree of caution and second guessing on their hand approach.(Usually after they realize they just short stacked themselves for nothing.) In that instance contempt triggers sadness, and regret. For how long will vary from player to player.
A player who makes a bad decision is most likely going to trigger anger if he doesn’t hit his card, and he will also usually get out of the way from another bet. Most of the time the anger won’t be expressed right away. But as I’ve said before, anger is something that festers, and you should be a little more cautious when playing with this player for at least the rest of that session, especially if he’s within 3 seats to your left. He’s not playing angry, he’s angry at YOU, and if he has the opportunity to be in a hand with you, with a good starting hand, he’s going to be set on winning it.
How to spot contempt is actually one of the easier emotions to spot, because trying to hide it, kind of twists the mouth area. This is because contempt is one of the most animated, expressions that we have. The nose will curl, the eyebrows will be drawn together, the corners of the lips will curl, and there are many other little motions. BUT because of this, you don’t want to look for any of them directly relating to contempt.
Because of all of the muscles needed to make the expression of contempt, we are not only aware that we do it, we are constantly, in every day life, hiding it, all of the time. And they way we hide it, is by trying to move the muscles in the opposite manner of which they want to move naturally, and without years of FOCUSED training, our brains CAN’T consciously control them all at once, while also receiving a signal to do the opposite. This is because every person has a ‘dominant’ side of their brain, and has better control over one side of their body than the other, from birth. And starting there, everything we do starts to form ’muscle memory’ increasing our dexterity on one side faster, and better than the other.(aka left handed, right handed etc…) ***Info side note needed: The right half, controls the left side of your body, and vice versa. So 95% of the time of more, if you are left handed, the right side of your brain is the dominant side.***
When a person tries to hide contempt, they confuse the muscles around their mouth and cheek area, and what ends up happening is, in an attempt to press the lips together, or keep their lips pressed together in a straight line(no curls) the less dominant side of their body will curl up anyways. This is often mistaken for a smirk or happiness via rascality because of this. But really, they won’t BOTH curl, because your dominant side has enough strength, and muscle control to respond better to signals from the brain and keep it straight. The other side doesn’t, and as I call it, ’reverts to default’ meaning, it does what its suppose to do automatically under that emotional condition. In poker, again the mouth in my opinion is the most important movement tell with this emotion due t the frequent use of hats and sunglasses, and inability to keep the mouth covered.
If you don’t believe me, as an experiment, the next time you’re bored, try to raise JUST the eyebrow, opposite of your writing hand. You’ll find the both want to raise, and you have to consciously keep the one on your dominant side down, whereas when you want to raise JUST the one on the dominant side, you can do it easily, and to a much more exaggerated height without feeling the pull of the other. This strength and response difference is the same the whole way down your face(and body really). And yes, there are exceptions, so if you CAN do this, ask 5 or 10 of your friends or family members to try and they‘ll tell you how difficult it is, plus you‘ll be able to visually see the movement difference.