How to get better at recognising facial expressions: 7 tips

§ 1A skill you can train

Recognising expressions improves with practice. In randomised studies, training with feedback raised accuracy on brief expressions, and the gains lasted for weeks (Matsumoto and Hwang, 2011). Hurley (2012) compared different ways of training and found that description, practice and feedback together worked best. The tips below follow those findings.

Two ingredients matter most. The first is feedback: knowing right away whether you were right, and which cue you missed. The second is variety: different faces, intensities and durations, so that you learn the cues themselves rather than memorising particular pictures. A good check of real progress is a test on faces you have never practised with.

§ 2Seven tips

1. Name movements, not feelings. Say what moved, such as “inner brows up, lip corners down”, before you name an emotion. It keeps you precise about what you actually saw.
2. Start with the eyes and brows. Fear, anger and sadness are carried mostly by the upper face (Wegrzyn and colleagues, 2017), yet many people look mainly at the mouth.
3. Learn the pairs that get confused. Fear and surprise, anger and disgust, contempt and a small smile: study the cues that separate each pair (see fear vs surprise).
4. Always get feedback. Guessing without checking teaches little. After each answer, see the correct label and the cue, and look again.
5. Practise little and often. A few minutes a day spread over weeks beats one long session; spaced practice is one of the best-supported findings in learning research (Cepeda and colleagues, 2006).
6. Include subtle and brief expressions. Real expressions are often weak, partial or quick. Once full expressions are easy, practise low-intensity faces, the eyes alone and short flashes.
7. Vary the faces. People recognise expressions better within their own cultural group (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002), so practise with faces of different people.

§ 3What practice will and will not do

Practice makes you better at the kind of task you practised. Döllinger and colleagues (2021) found large gains in trained micro-expression recognition but no transfer to recognising emotional cues in other settings. More generally, training mainly improves the trained tasks (Simons and colleagues, 2016).

Recognising a facial movement is also not the same as knowing what someone feels. The same expression can mean different things in different situations (Barrett and colleagues, 2019), and no amount of practice turns a face into a lie detector. Use what you notice as a reason to listen and ask, not as a verdict.

§ 4Using it in everyday life

• Notice, then ask: “You looked surprised just now. Did I say something unexpected?”
• Look for changes from a person’s usual face, not for single signs.
• Remember that tiredness, concentration, pain and culture all change the face.
• Never use an expression to judge, accuse or make decisions about someone.

Questions and answers

How long does it take to get better at recognising expressions?

Training studies have found improvements after short programmes, with gains still present weeks later. Regular short practice works better than occasional long sessions.

Can I practise with photos or videos?

Yes, as long as you can check the answer. Practice without feedback teaches much less.

Does this make me better at understanding people?

Recognising expressions is one small part of understanding people. Training improves recognition on practice faces; evidence that it improves other social skills is limited.

Will practice help me tell when someone is lying?

No. Research finds that people detect lies only slightly better than chance, and expression training has not been shown to improve lie detection.