The Facial Action Coding System was published by Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen in Facial Action Coding System: A Technique for the Measurement of Facial Movement in 1978. This publication has forever changed the modern way of thinking about emotions and the approach to their recognition and research. The key assumption of the authors was the empirically confirmed thesis that human emotions were innate and universal, i.e., independent of the place on earth; people, as representatives of the same species, experience emotions that manifest themselves in the same facial expressions (people from different cultural backgrounds were examined, also those that had never had any contacts with the Western civilization before). In the final version of the system, Ekman distinguished 7 emotions that he called the basic ones. These include: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust and contempt.

It turns out that regardless of what language we speak and what standards of behaviour have been instilled in the process of our education, we show happiness, sadness, anger, etc. in a similar way. Subsequent research has shown that the universality of emotions also applies to those blind since birth and even children in mother’s womb in which, about 6 months of age, you can notice the first facial expressions of joy and disgust. The fact that our face betrays authentic emotions and, consequently, intentions and attitudes has almost instantly become the subject of special interest of all professionals whose daily work is directly related to reading human emotions (employees of marketing and HR departments, psychologists, policemen, employees of intelligence agencies). From our perspective, skills related to the accurate recognition of emotional states of others will have critical meaning for everyone working in sales, customer service and, of course, those whose most important role is to manage others.

During our training and courses, according to Paul Ekman’s guidelines, we practice four basic skills:

1. Mindfulness of emotions that arise within us before we even begin to speak or do something,
2. Conscious control over selection of own behaviour in order to be able to achieve goals important for us without harming others,
3. Recognition of emotions in others based on subtle movements of facial muscles, body posture and tone of voice,
4. Caution in using the information obtained this way in relation to feelings of other people.

To practice and master the accuracy of reading facial expressions, we use computer software developed based on a manual analysis of 10,000 photographs depicting the above-mentioned emotions. The application creates a face grid composed of 500 key points that enable to monitor the movements of individual muscles.

Happiness 6 + 12

Action Unit 6: Raising the cheeks; Action Unit 12: Raising the corner of the lips

The expression of happiness is a signal that we experience pleasure, amusement, relief, peace, satisfaction, pride or excitement. By being happy, we tell others that what is happening “is good and we encourage them to come into contact with us and be together” (Paul Ekman). In our work, we meet many angry, sad and frightened people. We rarely see joy on their faces. The constant message to others: “I am unhappy; I am scared; you upset me; I will do something to you soon” makes our colleagues and employees want to avoid us; they will not pass information on to us; they will not talk about their problems or ideas. Many people we work with do not realise the huge professional potential hidden in the job that gives you satisfaction and allows you to be a “cheerful person”.