Vanessa Van Edwards shows how to spot the sadness microexpression: pulled-down mouth corners, pouted lower lip, pinched inner eyebrows, drooping eyelids. This expression appears just before crying and triggers a feedback loop that makes your body actually feel sad. Recognizing it lets you step in before someone breaks down.
Not only does sadness in our body cause sadness in our face, but sadness on our face also causes sadness in our body. You know you've hit accurate sadness. When your eyes start to water, we're gonna try to do it together. I want you to pull the corners of your mouth down into a frown. So pull them down as far as they'll go. And then pout out your lower lip. And then I want you to pinch the inner corners of your eyebrows together. And then I want you to droop your lids. That is sadness. Was it really hard? So when I get a real sadness microexpression, I actually begin to tear up. And that's because of the incredible facial feedback loop. So much so that we know that sadness is the precursor micro expression to crying. If you wonder if someone's about to break into tears, they're usually in this position, and I know tears are coming. So in a way, the sadness micro expression is like a red flag. It's like a nice warning sign saying, this person is about to get really upset. You better act now.
