How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching With Meta Communication | Page 47
learn from the 'Verbal flirting' sections of this Guide, these are essential ingredients of successful flirting. So, assuming
your target finds you attractive, an eyebrow-flash with appropriate follow-up could leapfrog you into instant intimacy.
Two warnings are necessary here:
1) If your target does not find you attractive,
the eyebrow-flash strategy may backfire, as
the confusion over whether or not you
already know each other will be experienced
as unpleasant and annoying, rather than
amusing.
2) Do not use the eyebrow-flash in Japan,
where it has definite sexual connotations and
is therefore never used as a greeting signal.
If your target is attracted to you, this may be
more evident in facial expressions than in
words. Studies have found that women are
generally better than men at reading these
expressions, but that both sexes have equal
difficulty in seeing through people's
expressions when they are controlling their faces to hide their real feelings.
The problem is that although faces do express genuine feelings, any facial expression that occurs naturally can also be
produced artificially for a social purpose. Smiles and frowns, to take the most obvious examples, can be spontaneous
expressions of happiness or anger, but they can also be manufactured as deliberate signals, such as frowning to indicate
doubt or displeasure, smiling to signal approval or agreement, etc. Feelings can also be hidden under a 'social' smile, a
'stiff upper lip' or a blank, 'inscrutable' expression.
Despite this potential for 'deceit', we rely more on facial expressions than on any other aspect of body language. In
conversation, we watch our companions' faces rather than their hands or feet, and rely on their facial signals to tell us
what effect we are having, and how to interpret what they say. Although people are better at controlling their facial
expressions than other aspects of body language, there is still some 'leakage', and the following clues will help you to
detect insincerity.
Let's say your target smiles at you. How do you know
whether this smile is spontaneous or manufactured?
There are four ways of telling the difference.
First, spontaneous smiles produce characteristic wrinkles
around the eyes, which wil