Tiredness is read from two places: the upper eyelids and the corners of the mouth. After a night without sleep, raters scored hanging eyelids and drooping mouth corners higher, and both tracked how tired the person looked (Sundelin et al. 2013). A sleepier look also made others less willing to spend time with the person (Sundelin et al. 2017).
What to do
- Lift your upper lids a little, so your eyes are 4 to 15% wider than at rest. Not more: wide eyes read as fear and awe (Lee & Anderson 2017).
- Keep your mouth corners level, not drooping.
- Keep your chin level, within 5°. A lowered head with lowered eyes reads as submissive and sad (Mignault & Chaudhuri 2003).
- Look at their eyes for about 3 seconds at a time, then glance to the side, not down (Binetti et al. 2016; Mason, Tatkow & Macrae 2005).
What else it does
More open upper lids also raised perceived intelligence, independently of attractiveness (Talamas et al. 2016).
Practise it live
Open How I Land and choose “alert” after “Be seen as”. Your camera shows your face with the look drawn on it, and one instruction at a time tells you what to move. When it fits, hold it for five seconds to remember the position.
Free. Nothing is recorded, stored or sent.
This changes how you look, not how rested you are. Sleep is the other fix.