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Stephanie Scagnegatti
COM 3404
Application Essay 1
This week during readings and videos we took a deeper look into emotions and facial
expressions. The role facial expressions and eye expressions play in expressing our emotions is
so very important. One may tend to think that the way we express emotion and how we feel
comes from the inside, and that external cues arent all that revealing, but indeed they are. During
this essay I hope to shine a light on why studying how we express emotions is important, the
various categories of emotion revealed within our expressions, facial management techniques,
how I feel and think about emotional expressions as a whole and relating them to our
relationships with others.
Our textbook shed light on facial expressions and behavior as well as eye behavior with
regards to emotion. Then I watched three videos where it dug deeper into those categories to help
me fully understand the concepts put before me. When asking the question of why is it
important to study how we express emotions?, I gather that we not only need it to understand
people fully but also to even gather information on how to tell if a person is lying. According to
the Lie To Me Promo video, it may be human nature to lie but the truth is written all over your
face (Promo). Knowing this bit of information helps me understand that knowing this means I
can learn to understand how our facial expressions mean something.
According to Paul Ekman, facial expressions in regards to emotion are the same from
country to country (Human Connection). When you read that I hope you too, understand that
our emotion can be extremely universal. Ekman also went on to say that our facial expression of

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emotions is involuntary (Human Connection), and that there, made me really get the whole
meaning behind the chapter on facial expression. We as human beings, in our nature, feel 7
different categories of emotions and within those 7, 6 are universal and we portray it on our face
and the way our eye behavior works. Facial expression and eye behavior can be so involuntary
that 95% of people cannot inhibit how they truly feel because it shows (Human Connection).
When discussing these 7 categories of emotion revealed by our facial expressions they
are, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, interest, surprise, and happiness (Nonverbal, p.76). These
emotions that are depicted on our face and in relation to our eye movement means that anytime
we feel feelings, we are wearing it on our sleeve. The thing is our facial muscles move
involuntarily and give us away. Knowing this makes the next part I am about to tell you so
interesting, because indeed there are situations where we try to mold our expressions to match a
different emotion or to even hide what we truly feel, yet we are always expressing some form of
emotion and that is what this all comes down to.
Although our facial expressions are at times involuntary and our emotions are worn on
our sleeve, there are four facial management techniques we use to control our face. According to
our text, masking involves repression of the expressions related to the emotion felt and their
replacement with expressions that are acceptable under circumstances (Nonverbal, p.79). This
technique would in fact mean that if I were to do worse on an exam than a friend, I will show
happiness for her even if I am sad at my own grade, here I would not want to show how I truly
feel. Intensification is exaggerating what we feel (Nonverbal, p.79), which means that if I know
my family bought me a car but it is supposed to be a surprise, I put on the most surprised face
and they cant even tell it isnt genuine.

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Aside from those two techniques, another two come into play with regards to managing
our facial expressions and they are neutralization and deintensification. Neutralization
eliminates any expression of emotion, puts on a poker face (Nonverbal, p.80). When
considering being neutral if someone is trying to put fear in me I may put on a facade of
unbothered, as to make them unaware of what I am really feeling inside, so that they are left with
the unknown. When it comes to deintensification, we reduce the intensity of our facial
expression of a particular emotion because circumstances require us to downplay how we feel
(Nonverbal, p.80). This technique means that if I am grieving the loss of a friend I may not cry as
to appear strong and support for others that may need me to be that for them.
What I have learned throughout this week of reading and watching videos is that a slight
facial expression or eye movement reveals so very much about how I am feeling. The fact that all
of this is all concluded to emotional expressions being universal, is completely understandable.
No matter what country you are in someone can quite easily tell if you are sad or even mad. We
can indeed control ourselves to a certain extent but we will always be showing emotion and that
means that we need to study this to truly understand each other better. The seven categories of
emotion we learn we reveal through expressions, means that we can truly see that being able to
read these from people can benefit us even in relationships. If someone you know, love, or even
care about can build a solid foundation for a long term relationship, based on being able to
understand how someone is feeling based on their facial expression, is huge. After all, our face
is usually visible during interactions (Nonverbal), which means it gives us a deeper vision into
the soul of that person.

Work Cited:
Quicksubs. "Lie To Me Promo." YouTube. YouTube, 2009. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
Richmond, Virginia P., James C. McCroskey, and Steven K. Payne. Nonverbal Behavior in
Interpersonal Relations. 7th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987. Print.
Thecuriositymachine. "The Human Connection: Exploring Facial Expressions with Paul
Ekman." YouTube. YouTube, 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.