This Facial Expression Predicts Divorce With 93.6% Accuracy, Says Renowned Psychologist
Africa images | Canva I have this little-known superpower: Within microseconds of seeing someone, I can tell exactly what they’re feeling. I can tell if they’re annoyed. Distracted. Depressed. Manic. Grieving. Hiding something. Lying.
It’s a blessing and a curse. When I was 11 years old, my mom and I were watching a TV documentary about the Susan Smith case. Eight days after a “carjacker stole her two babies,” Susan cried into the microphones at a press conference, begging for the safe return of her sons.
“She killed them.” My mom gaped at me. “How do you know that? Have you seen her on the news?”
“No,” I said. “I just know. She did it. Her expression doesn’t match up.” Spoiler: Smith was sentenced to life in prison for drowning her kids in a lake. It’s not because I’m an empath. (In fact, before I was diagnosed with a dissociative disorder and spent years healing it in EMDR therapy, I thought I was a sociopath.) It’s because those who endure childhood trauma are often hypervigilant when it comes to facial expressions.
This ability to read people — quickly and with unnerving accuracy — once kept me alive. Needless to say, I’m fascinated by facial expressions. This week, I watched Vanessa Van Edwards’ MasterClass, “People Intelligence: Read, Lead, and Influence Any Room.”
Van Edwards is a self-proclaimed recovering awkward person, so she spent years studying body language to give herself a leg up in social situations. Her MasterClass teaches people how to make themselves as magnetic as possible — in job interviews, while networking, and during presentations. Y’know, business stuff. And then, in the middle of her lesson on microexpressions, Van Edwards drops this bomb about doomed relationships:
Contempt is the facial expression that predicts divorce with 94% accuracy.
“Marriage and family counselor Dr. John Gottman researched married couples, and he found that the greatest predictor of divorce was the contempt microexpression. If one member of the couple showed the contempt microexpression toward the other, with 93.6% accuracy, they’d get divorced.”
Dr. Gottman is one of the leading relationship researchers, and Van Edwards cites his study called “How a Couple Views Their Past Predicts Their Future.” Basically, Dr. Gottman spent 15 minutes interviewing each couple about their history. If one partner showed contempt, nine out of 10 times, they were divorced within three years.
But as Van Edwards points out, microexpressions are tricky, and contempt is the hardest to read. Universal across all cultures, “microexpressions (less than a second) cannot be controlled, so they are honest views into emotions,” Van Edwards writes in her book, Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People. Blink, and you’ll miss them. But learn to read them, and you’ll gain invaluable insight into anyone’s psyche.
Humans exhibit seven different microexpressions: anger, disgust, happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, and contempt.
voronaman / Shutterstock
On her website, Van Edwards offers an expression quiz so people can test their facial-reading abilities. (Not to brag, but ya traumatized girl got an A+.) By the time she wrote Captivate, over 22,000 people had taken it — and contempt was easily the most misread expression. It stumped a whopping 40% of people.
Most people, Van Edwards says, confuse it for boredom or sarcasm. But in reality, it signifies something much more serious:
“Scorn, disdain, pessimism, hatred. There’s an element of ‘better than’ with contempt. [It predicts divorce] because contempt is the only expression that doesn’t go away. It turns into disrespect. It turns into hatred. This is why at the end of a bad marriage, you see two people who can’t even speak to each other.”
So how do you recognize contempt?
Contempt reveals itself with a lift of either the right or left cheek, pulling the mouth to one side of the face — almost like a smirk. While the eyes may look apathetic, they’re actually judgmental.
When Van Edwards recognizes this one-sided smirk in a negotiation, business meeting, or presentation, she checks in: “‘Does this all make sense? Can I answer here? How are you feeling about this?’ That check-in is often enough to dispel the contempt.” But in years-long romantic relationships, dispelling contempt takes more than a simple check-in.
Dr. Gottman’s research pinpoints the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (four destructive communication patterns that signal the end of a relationship) and contempt is the worst one: “Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts about one’s partner, and it arises in the form of an attack on someone’s sense of self.”
Most of the time, contempt grows from desperation: You’ve been disappointed over and over again, and now you resent your partner so much, you’re actually questioning their moral character.
And guess what? Contempt doesn’t just hurt your relationship; it also hurts you. Studies find that those who feel contemptuous of their partners are more likely to suffer from infectious illnesses due to weakened immune systems. You can fix it, but according to Dr. Gottman, it’ll require both short-term and long-term behavioral shifts.
How to overcome contempt in relationships
First, the contemptuous partner needs to let it out — constructively. Start by describing the unmet feelings and needs that are causing the contempt in the first place. Ideally, avoid “you” language (which sounds like blame), and stick to “I” feelings and “we” solutions:
- “I feel unappreciated and taken for granted when I’m the only one doing things around the house. I really need help cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids.”
- “I’ve been feeling so disconnected from each other. Can we put our phones away for an hour after we get home from work and just spend quality time together?”
- “I feel judged when you criticize the way I do things, and I need to know we’re on the same team.”
- “Whenever you’re late, I feel like I’m not a priority. It’s because my parents were never home, so waiting around makes me lonely and sad. Can we figure out a plan to make sure we’re on the same schedule?”
After that, the couple needs to establish a “culture of appreciation.” To create said culture, Gottman uses the motto “Small things often,” meaning that tiny, intentional moments of gratitude hold more weight than extravagant gestures:
“If you regularly express appreciation, gratitude, affection, and respect for your partner, you’ll create a positive perspective in your relationship that acts as a buffer for negative feelings. The more positive you feel, the less likely that you’ll feel or express contempt.”
According to Gottman’s research, the “magic ratio” is five to one, meaning that to heal your relationship, you’ll need five positive interactions to every negative interaction.
Of course, the easiest way to combat contempt is to prevent it from forming in the first place. After growing up in a household with someone who radiated all four Horsemen qualities, almost all the time, I wanted to make sure I never ended up in that situation again.
These days, I don’t use my superpower much. I don’t have to. The man I chose to spend my life with is gentle rather than aggressive. Respectful instead of reactive. Conscientious and communicative, not contemptuous.
I don’t have to scrutinize his face for signs of rage or walk on eggshells to avoid setting him off. Actually, it’s the opposite. He calms my nervous system with the softness of his eyes and the curve of his mouth. Both sides, thank God. And thanks to Van Edwards and Gottman, when life and time inevitably start to test our patience with each other, I know exactly what to do.
Maria Cassano is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared on NBC, Bustle, CNN, The Daily Beast, Food & Wine, and Allure, among others.
