Facial Coding and Emotional Intelligence

When someone asks you, “How are you feeling today?” How do you typically answer?  

If you’re like many of us, you answer with a simple, “Good.” But, that doesn’t convey nearly the entire story, does it? 

The fact is, we experience incredibly complex emotions, and our ability to recognize our own emotions and the emotions of others is called emotional intelligence, and it’s what we’re focusing on with this week’s guest. 

This week, we’re speaking with Dan Hill. He’s an internationally recognized expert on the role of emotions in politics, business, sports, and pop culture. He’s spoken to audiences in over 25 countries, and to capture and quantify emotions, Dan pioneered the use of facial coding (the analysis of facial expressions) with his company Sensory Logic. 

Dan is also the author of the book “Famous Faces Decoded: A Guidebook for Reading Others,” which we dive into during our conversation. 

We also talk about: 

• What emotional intelligence is and how it relates to many facets of life 
• Facial coding and the 23 different emotional markers on our faces.
• The specificity we can get to when we label emotions. BTW, did you know there are SEVEN different types of anger? 
• Finally, Dan gives us numerous examples of famous people and their “signature emotions” and how to recognize them in their expressions. 

This was such a fascinating conversation, particularly when you think about it from the context of how strongly it impacts our day-to-day lives. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!