Philosophy Now Forum

In the book "How to be a woman" Caitlin Moran says that she can see in other people´s eyes the truth about herself, like in a mirror.
Especially in her younger sister Caz who is a nihilist and a blunt person.

How can such a thing work ?
Do we express so much by our eyes alone ?
Is it the whole face that expresses the verdict or the whole body even ?

I thought it was normal to keep a neutral face, especially in a polite country like UK.

duszek wrote:In the book "How to be a woman" Caitlin Moran says that she can see in other people´s eyes the truth about herself, like in a mirror.
Especially in her younger sister Caz who is a nihilist and a blunt person.

If she's blunt, she's expressed her opinion in words. A sister would know those opinions well enough that even a micro-expression - a tightening of the corners of the mouth, a flicker of eyelids, a tiny moue - would be enough to signal: "There you go again, overreacting as usual!" or "Seriously? You're wearing that to a wedding?" or "Daddy always like you best." or whatever's gone down between them a hundred times before.

How can such a thing work ?

They don't. It's a figure of speech. Of course eyeballs are reflective, like any shiny surface - but in order to focus on your reflection, you have to look at only one eye at a time. We generally don't, but try it sometime. You can't see their face, or the expression on it: all you get is a neutral image, like you would from sunglasses.

Do we express so much by our eyes alone ?

We express exactly nothing with our eyes. It's the face around the eyes, where the eyes are looking, the body language - plus a big dollop of what the observer reads into these things.

Is it the whole face that expresses the verdict or the whole body even ?

Yes, but we only read accurately the people we know well - from the context of a relationship, a history; many conversations, many reactions.
How often has it happened that a relative stranger said: "You must think I..." or "I know what you're thinking." and they were completely wrong. Whatever you were actually thinking may have shown on your face, but they didn't read you correctly.

I thought it was normal to keep a neutral face, especially in a polite country like UK.

UK is polite? Maybe so, but all the English people I've known had quite flexible upper lips. They weren't a bit stiff or secretive about their feelings. They do, however, have different communication styles - by region, by class, by education within the country, and also different from Canadians and Americans. It takes a little while to know how someone expresses emotions and responses.

duszek wrote: I thought it was normal to keep a neutral face, especially in a polite country like UK.

Yes, Skip, I suppose that you are right.

In one of Dickens´s novels there is a servant who makes a young man feel immature just by the way he looks or refuses to look at him, as if he were expressing silently: You are so very young.

If this young man got married, saved the country in a way etc. would he impress the waiter differently and would he get a different body language comment on himself ?

Skip wrote:

duszek wrote:Do we express so much by our eyes alone ?

We express exactly nothing with our eyes. It's the face around the eyes, where the eyes are looking, the body language - plus a big dollop of what the observer reads into these things.

As it happens, we express some very important attitudes by our eyes alone. Most obvious is where they are looking, which will tell you pretty much what someone is actually interested in. In the case of people talking to me, this is most frequently whatever it is beyond my left shoulder. On occasions where people maintain eye contact, you can tell whether they are more likely to shag you or thump you from the size of the pupil, but then that could be attributed to ecstasy or smack, depending on the sort of people you hang round with.

It would be interesting to observe if silent comments, unflattery remarks etc. that we articulate in our mind only somehow express themselves in our body language and thus influence the mood of our interlocutor.

duszek wrote:It would be interesting to observe if silent comments, unflattery remarks etc. that we articulate in our mind only somehow express themselves in our body language and thus influence the mood of our interlocutor.

They do, and as per the title of your thread, it's called mirroring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology)