Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Paul Ekman

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life Reviews

• 
  Starfire

  Probably unsurprisingly, given my interests and passions, I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Paul Ekman, who is the real-life inspiration behind Lie to Me's Cal Lightman (well, up to the end of s1 anyway)
  
  The book felt like it was really in two parts - one was theoretical and covered the concepts of what exactly emotions are (generally and in specific), the research behind claiming that certain emotions are universal, and the possible evolutionary usefulness of both emotion in general, and of specific emotions. The second was far more practical - detailing, for each of the 7 emotions Ekman believes are universal, pointers for recognising specific facial cues that signal the emotion; as well as practical suggestions for what potential ways to respond if you see those cues in a conversational partner in different situations.
  
  It was actually the latter that really made this book valuable from my viewpoint. There are plenty of body language books out there that say "If you see X expression/posture, the person to whom you're talking is feeling Y", but leave it at that. Ekman makes a point of emphasising that, especially if the cues you pick up are in the form of a partial expression or one that flashes across someone's face and then disappears, chances are that they don't WANT you to know how they're feeling, or they wouldn't actively be trying to mask it. In such cases, actively drawing attention to what you've seen can leave them feeling defensive, frustrated, or as though you're criticising them for feeling something they don't want to be feeling. He also constantly repeats the danger of making "The Othello Error", which is where you recognise a cue (e.g. fear or anger) and assume you know what's causing it, when in fact, you have absolutely no information beyond your own assumptions about what it would be if you were them.
  
  As someone who actively hates being "read" myself - especially if someone insists they know better than I do what I'm feeling because they've seen and focussed in on a single cue in isolation - I almost yelled "Halleluyah" when I read this. It's not that Ekman is saying "don't do anything with the non-verbal information you pick up", but rather, try to recognise that what's appropriate to do with the information differs depending on the situation and your relationship with your conversational partner outside of the conversation. The way you respond to a verbally-unacknowledged, controlled expression of anger from your workmate, your boss, your lover, and your teenage child can and should all differ. Sometimes, allowing the expression to pass unremarked but changing your own tone might be more appropriate. Other times, acknowledging it might be the way to go, but even then, phrasing it openly with something like "I get the impression there might be more you want to say on the issue - am I projecting here?" is likely to raise less in the way of defensiveness than, "Despite your words, your expression tells me you're angry - what's the problem?"
  
  All up, I found this a fascinating book, and am seriously thinking about buying it (and a couple of Paul Ekman's other books) so I can reread it over and over again at leisure. I'm going to give the book an 8.5/10 and recommend it to anyone and everyone who works with people, who wants to improve their practical interpersonal communication skills, who's interested in Lie to Me and wants to find out more about the real "Cal Lightman", or who's just generally interested in non-verbal communication.
  
  
• 
  Bob Nichols

  Ekman writes about "the" emotions. These are anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, happiness.
  
  While his focus is on universal facial expressions, Ekman has a lot to say about emotions. They "can go on for minutes." Anything beyond a few seconds or minutes is a mood. Beyond that they are a personality type. Emotions have specific triggers, but moods "just happen" for unknown reasons. Emotions motivate our lives and we "organize ourselves" to maximize positive emotions and to minimize negative emotions. Emotions are responses to outside triggers. For example, "we are gripped" by an inappropriate emotion when we are furious "about having been insulted in public."
  
  Emotions evolved for evolutionary usefulness, Ekman states. Sadness and despair "may bring help from others." But many of our modern-day emotions are not really emotions. We have to learn that a car bearing down on us directly is harmful, and we move out of the way because of this knowledge. It's not fear that makes us move, but a learned response. Anger is a dangerous emotion and justified only when lives are threatened and there's no other way to prevent injury. Sex and hunger have specific locations in the body so they are not emotions. Hatred and resentment are not emotions because they last too long. But they are not moods either, so Ekman calls resentment an "emotional attitude" and hatred an "emotional attachment" along with romantic and parental love. Love is not an emotion because "love endures" and parents "never stop worrying about their kids."
  
  Startle is a physical reflex, but not an emotion. The core of fear is the possibility of pain, but pain is not an emotion. It's too specific and we know exactly where it hurts, unlike anger, fear, and sadness which reside in some undefined part of the body. Empathy and compassion are not emotions because we actually feel what another is feeling but the other's feeling is not really our emotion. Rather than emotion pure and simple, Ekman calls empathy and compassion "compassionate empathy," and "cognitive empathy" and "emotional empathy." Disgust is a negative emotion because it doesn't feel good. There are sixteen enjoyable emotions including a few with foreign names. Jealousy is not an emotion. It is an emotional scene or plot involving three actors. Finally, it is not until the last chapter that Ekman defines emotions in a summary way. Emotion is a feeling, it's brief, it's something that matters, and it happens to us and "not chosen by us." When in the "grip of an emotion," we can't reappraise, and an emotion's facial signals are clear. Ekman is sure that shame, guilt, and embarassment are emotions, even though they don't give off visual signs.
  
  Ekman's view of emotions raises numerous questions and issues. Anger, sadness, fear and happiness are emotions if they occur in flashes. If they last longer, they are something else. It's difficult to imagine a "flash" of happiness, particularly when the author gives sixteen variations of this emotion that includes physiological states lasting for more than a few minutes. These longer-lasting variations include, for example, contentment, ecstasy, "fiero" (satisfaction for a hard task accomplished), gratitude, and schadenfreude. Emotions motivate our lives, the author says, and we "organize ourselves" to seek positive emotions and to minimize the negative ones. But how does this work if emotions are triggered responses? Ekman uses fear and anger to illustrate triggered responses and most of the examples he uses in the book are these two clearly reactive emotions.
  
  "Happiness" is a large emotional concept that Ekman says we seek to maximize. But if we seek happiness, how is that a reactive, response? Ekman has us as passive beings, waiting to respond when the right stimulus comes along. How is that "seeking" happiness? For that matter, why do we seek to minimize "the negative" emotions? Presumably, we care enough to want to minimize negative emotions so that raises the question of what is "care" all about and how does "care" relate to our emotional makeup? Ekman says that pain is not an emotion because it's a physical pain. But we also know that "sadness," the flip side of happiness, is psychologically painful. We know sadness is a pain (per Buddha among others), and we know that happiness is "pleasurable." If happiness is an emotion, why is not the pain that comes from not getting what we want or from getting what we don't want?
  
  Ekman states that an insult is a triggering event for anger, but why does the self react to an insult? What is it about the self that cares enough to be angry? In "Descent," Darwin is clear enough that not everything in our makeup has to have an evolutionary function. Ekman tries to find a function for sadness and despair (inducing help from others) but these could be and are likely to be byproducts of a self that didn't get what it wanted or having lost what it had. A good part of life is, simply, a bummer and it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Ekman's example of moving away from a car bearing down on a person is interesting. He says it is not fear but a learned response since we didn't have cars back in our reptilian days when fear originated. True, but back in the day our ancestors probably had rocks falling from cliffs or some predator charging them and the reaction was likely the same as getting out of the way of the car: a fear-based reaction. And it was probably quite reflexive and preceded by a startle.
  
  It's easy to focus on the obvious problems with anger, and Ekman refers to "His Holiness, the Dalai Lama," for his perspective on this and other emotions. In limiting the appropriateness of anger to just one, narrow example (referred to previously), Ekman is removing one of the primary tools for an individual to defend its interests. Done well, anger signals to the other that there's a problem, in contrast to burying it and having it come out in other ways. There's something to be said for honest reactions without insincerity. For one things, you know there's a problem that needs to be addressed. For that matter, Ekman's takes too much of his understanding of emotions from the Dalai Lama whose understanding of emotions comes from a distinct religious viewpoint that works only if one subscribes to that perspective (Mindfulness, Oneness, Deliverence) and devotes years to it.
  
  Sex and hunger and physical pain have specific locations in the body but why is that a criterion for a non-emotion? We feel Ekman's seven listed emotions in a body-wide way. But all are FELT. Hatred, resentment, jealousy, parental and romantic love are also felt, and feeling is one of his definitions of an emotion (disgust is an emotion because "it doesn't feel good"). Regarding feeling, those who have felt jealousy know that they are in the grip of something far more powerful than three actors trying to work something out. Those who love their parents or children or partner know they are in the grips of something powerful, even if it transcends Ekman's brief moment in time criterion. "Love endures" Ekman says, and so does "worrying" about kids. But what is worry if not a low-grade, chronic fear. It can't be a mood because there's a specific source for the worry, and it's hard to imagine "worrying about the kids" as a personality type. Despite Ekman's rewording exercise, compassion and empathy are just alternative words for "sympathy" as Hume uses that term which is regarded by most as an emotion of some sort. What difference does it make if the other has "the emotion" that we feel, if we are feeling it as if it is our own?
  
  All in all, Ekman delimits his subject matter too severely. He is really after the universal facial expressions. All of those feeling states and behavioral expressions that do not give off a universal facial expression are chucked. They are non-emotions. Rewording and reconceptualizing is not helpful and do not resonate. Darwin viewed emotional life more holistically. There are gradations of feeling relating to cognitive control - ranging from reflex to simple emotions, to complex emotions, to free choice under cognitive direction in the service of some internal need, and gradations in intensity. Ekman's seven emotions are closely aligned with those that Darwin's gave in his "Expressions" book, but Darwin's book was about those emotions that had their counterparts in animals and had a universal expression in humans. He was not limiting the discussion about what is and what is not an emotion. Ekman's seven emotions are likely a small subset - those with universal facial expression - of a much larger story about our emotional life.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Stefana Raileanu

  It's obvious that many people who read it are fans of the TV series ''Lie to me''. Well, yeah, this book is more for amateurs.
  I don't mean it wasn't worth reading, but I would have liked it more if the author exposed his researches more briefly. Anyway, I understand why Ekman wrote it in such a familiar way. His readers are very diverse.
  
  I found ''Telling Lies'' a more useful book.
• 
  Amir Tesla

  Paul Ekman is world-famous for his discoveries of facial expressions, the subtle changes on the face on the face when a person feels a particular emotion.
  
  This book talks about 6 universal emotions along with how they are manifested in people's face. Also it teaches you how to recognize them when someone is trying to suppress the felt emotions.
  
  Each chapter sparks off by an introduction to the emotion that is to be discussed in the chapter which is boring like hell and then is followed by an awesome discussion on how to recognize such emotions. You could somehow view it as reading the minds of others to know how they are feeling (but definitely not why they are feeling that).
  
  I expected more from this book.
• 
  Andreea Zelenyak

  O carte din care ai multe lucruri interesante de invatat. Paul Ekman e un geniu!! O recomand!!! 5 din 5 stele
  Recomand sa vizionati si serialul Lie to me. Este foarte interesant!!!
• 
  Paige

  I wasn't a huge fan of this book... I notice a lot of people read it because the author is involved in a TV program. I'm giving it two stars because it did have a smattering of information buried under all his anecdotes and repetitive reminders. I don't disagree with him at all about his main point, which is that facial expressions emotions are universal. The best part of the book was probably the pictures of the different expressions or partial expressions. I highlighted a few things that I thought were worth remembering, but overall I think I would've enjoyed this a lot more if it weren't book length. I would've gotten just as much knowledge and a lot more pleasure out of it if it were only 30 or so pages with the expressions explained in an appendix. As it was, it seemed a lot of it was filler, repeating statements he'd already made, and stories about people he knew. That's probably great for a TV audience but I was hoping just for more information.
• 
  Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer

  Die Emotionen kann man im Gesicht lesen. Egal ob Angst, Überraschung oder Wut, man kann Emotionen anhand der Auge und Mund sehen.
• 
  Flybyreader

  He is the one and only - Paul Ekman -. He discovered micro-expressions (tiny facial expressions that only last for a fraction of a second), caused a stir among psychologists and researchers by claiming and proving that some facial expressions are innate, thus universal (he ventured a trip to New Guinea for the love of research) and has put a full-stop to the question - are expressions and gestures socially learned or culturally variable-, he has worked as a lie detector and revealed criminals and has opened new horizons for reading body language and facial expressions, thus helped us better understand the nature of emotions and how they are reflected on our faces and bodies.
  In this book, he challenges readers to manage and/or unlearn acquired emotional responses and prevent leakage (facial signs that betray lies). Ekman analyzes universal emotional expressions in each chapter and gives tips as to how we can control them.
  The downside of the book is that it feels like it's written for self-improvement purposes yet the terminology and style smell like an academic article. It was a bit too long and detailed but well-constructed. If you like the series "Lie to Me" and want to learn more about this amazing world of expressions, Ekman is your man. However, I suggest starting with "Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage" - for a more thorough read.
• 
  Kaaveh

  این کتاب، یه ضعف خیلی بزرگ داره، اونم اسمشه! اسمش طوریه که وقتی اولین بار آدم می‌شنوه، بنظرش میاد کتاب زردی باشه. این کتاب، یه کتاب آکادمیکه که روایت تحقیقات و مطالعات ۴۰ساله پل اکمن هست. اکمن کسیه ک برای اولین بار تحقیقات گسترده‌ای روی
  Facial Microexpressions
  کرد. حالات چهره رایج یا
  Facial Expressions،
  چیزیه که وابسته به فرهنگه. اینکه معمولا هنگام شادی، غم، انزجار و ... چطور ابراز بشه. اما حالات صورتی هستن که توی کسری از ثانیه اتفاق میوفتن و باحالیش اینه که بین همه انسان‌ها مشترکه. چیزیه که حاصل فرگشت ماست. به این حالات لحظه‌ای،
  Facial Microexpressions
  میگن. تو ممکنه عصبانی بشی اما زود خودتو کنترل کنی و حالت چهره تو تغییر بدی، اما توی کسری از ثانیه حتما خودشو نشون داده اول.
  پل اکمن، از طرف آرپا (دارپا امروزی) تو سال ۱۹۶۵ مامور شد تا راجع به حالات چهره و احساسات تحقیق کنه. او، چندین سال توی قبایل بدوی زندگی کرده و از نزدیک راجع به احساسات و حالات چهره جهانی تحقیق کرده. اکمن، همینطور سر این قضیه با سازمان‌های ضدتروریستی، سی آی ای، اف بی آی و چند سازمان دیگه از کشورهای مختلف همکاری داشته. توی این کتاب از تحقیقاتی روایت میکنه که حاصل تلاشش برای پیدا کردن بروز احساسات جهانی آدم هاست.
  سریال
  Lie to me،
  نسخه هالیوودی کارهای اکمن هست. البته، اکمن مشاور علمی این سریال و انیمیشن
  Inside out
  پیکسار هم بود.
  
  پ.ن: راهی پیدا نکردم ک فرمت
  rtl
  متنمو درست کنم! 🤦🏻‍♂️
• 
  Stuart Macalpine

  A life time's work studying emotional facial expression, is made accessible to a general reader.
  
  Ekman shapes a number of aspects of cognitive coaching, which is how I came to the book, especially the problem resolving map. The text supports an understanding that the major emotions have a strong transcultural identity and transcultural, distinct facial muscle movements - which is no great surprise! - but more importantly he identifies all the nuances that any normal human being would never pick up on without guidance - even studying the pictures some aspects are very hard to pick out until you read his notes. Facial expressions of emotions are incredibly subtle and would take quite a lot of practice to routinely identify beyond the very obvious extremes. If one were to be able to pick these up they would considerably support coaching, especially paraphrasing for emotion during the PACE and LEAD of cognitive coaching. It is a great book. I wish there were more just on the actual expressions, and less general 'blurb' about the emotions themselves, which seemed a little redundant.
• 
  Yurena

  Me resulta difícil valorarlo en un conjunto porque hay partes que me han gustado mucho, mientras que otras no tanto. Lo que más interesante me ha resultado ha sido el tema de la universalidad de las emociones, la comparación con otras culturas. También está muy bien la descripción de la expresión de cada una de las emociones, principalmene por ir acompañadas de fotografías que van representando rasgo por rasgo.
  
  Sin embargo, ante cada emoción hace una presentación que me resulta excesivamente larga y repetitiva: para decir poco, emplea muchas páginas. Esa es la parte que menos me ha gustado. Tampoco me convence mucho el empleo de algunos términos, como "temas", que básicamente complican la explicación por evitar utilizar términos conductistas. Es decir, "crea" conceptos que ya existían bajo otro nombre.
  
  Así que de ahí mi valoración final. El libro va dando una de cal y otra de arena. En general, me parece interesante, pero esperaba más.
• 
  Sveta

  Very interesting topic. Super boring and dry writing style.
• 
  Linda Goldmane

  I gave up on reading this book on page 100. I was struggling to go through the pages. Although I learned some things, I gave up because I didn’t like the language of the book.
• 
  Rama El Hakim

  “When I wish to find out how wise or how stupid or how good or how wicked is anyone, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what
  thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.”
  
  First half is completely theory and past research which I didn’t find interesting enough to take up 100+ pages, but served as a good enough basis. Second half got a lot more practical, and provided useful insight in regards to micro expressions, the universal nature of facial expressions, and the evolutionary basis of emotions. The author expertly calls a study in Papa New Guinea to the reader’s attention repetitively, adding credibility to his work. I will, however say, if you’re looking to figure out each expression on someone’s face and debunk lies, you’re looking in the wrong place. Would recommend “Telling Lies” (same author) or “Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) instead. Great points on the lack of necessity of pointing out a hidden expression and the groundless statement preaching “getting one’s anger out”. Thought it did what it promised, but is at risk of quickly becoming dated.
• 
  Betsy Gant

  This book became a lengthy read for me, and I probably could have read faster if I had not tried to read the book like a textbook. But because I read Ekman's book like a textbook, I feel like I have meditated on the concepts more than I would have if I had just "sped read." I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in this topic. Obviously, this is a complicated field of study and Ekman does a great job explaining his research in layman's terms. Good stuff!
• 
  Katie

  If you watched and enjoyed “Lie to Me” – a television program that ran for 3 seasons – you are likely to enjoy this book. Lie to Me is based on the work of Dr. Paul Ekman (played beautifully by Tim Roth in the show), a world expert on facial expressions and a professor of psychology at the University of California medical school. Using photographs and stories, Ekman tells and shows us how facial expressions are rich with information. He also talks about what triggers emotion and what each emotion (sadness, anger, contempt, fear, etc.) is all about. Dr. Ekman has also written “Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage” – also an excellent book. Dr. Ekman is highly sought out in his work as an advisor to police departments, antiterrorism groups, and Pixar (who depend heavily on accurate and animated expressions).
• 
  Frank Aaskov

  This is the book on micro-expressions and on how to read emotions from people's faces. Ekman's research has inspired the TV-series "Lie to Me", which illustrates his work with reading facial emotions. The book gives you a more thorough insight, detailing seven different emotions and how they are universally portrayed in the face of all humans. The first four chapters were in my opinion a bit of waste as they had a tendency to be sort of self-help-book-ish, and gave the impression of less than serious work which was a shame as it clearly is not. However, the rest of the chapters more than made up for it, and it was still very interesting.
• 
  Davo

  This book has too many mistakes to be made by a social scientist and for having a published date of 2003. I actually went back and checked if the book was written in the 50s-70s, given the way it talks about non-western people.
  
  As someone mentioned in another review, AIDS is not a virus;
  Constantly referring to societies and groups as 'cultures';
  The Stone Age terminology reads condescending and inappropriate;
  "I have studied normal people..." Page 15... I
  
  As an anthropologist, I don't mind the conversational nature of the book, but I can't deal with the transgressive nature that he uses to describe non-western peoples.
• 
  FV

  The first part, about how emotions grow and how you can research them, was pretty awesome. However, I found the chapters about each individual emotion quite boring, and then it suddenly feels like a pretty long book to read cover to cover.
• 
  Lucy

  Dlouho ležela na stole a nebyl čas ji přečíst. Teď ale dostala šanci. Výborné čtení, náramně jsem si to užila :)
• 
  Kayson Fakhar

  بلخره باید یه فرقی بین اکمن و دری‌وریای سمینار مدیریتیا باشه
• 
  Justin (Backstage Revisited)

  Emotions Revealed contains several different parts. Ekman first introduces himself and how he got the research topic. At first he disagreed with the idea that expressions of emotions could be universal, but his research opposed his own expectations. Ekman then goes on to describe what emotions are and when they occur. Emotions can for example occur when something is happening, and our so called automatic appraisals create an emotional reply on whatever is happening. Also memories or empathy are two of the reasons emotions appear, but there are some more.
  
  After that, Ekman goes on to discuss the in his opinion most importent and most often occuring emotions, which are anger, sadness, fear and surprise, disgust and contempt, and enjoyment emotions. He admits there are more different emotions, which he names somewhere at the end of his book, but he doesn't discuss them for the simple reason that he hasn't done any research on them. Ekman provides examples of pictures and news stories in which such emotions are visible, followed by its usefulness. The book contains a lot of pictures, of which most of them are his daughters' face, to show the different emotions and also to show different intensities of emotions. He ends every chapter with a discussion of how to react when you see people have such an emotion.
  
  The final chapter is about emotions and lying, in which he describes how he discovered the idea of micro-expressions and how these can help to discover lies. But there's no clear fix to catch liars, and micro-expressions can only help catch a liar half of the time.
  
  Three things were most interesting or surprising to me. The first one was that Ekman argues that hate can be a useful feeling and that people can function normally in life. Expressing hate to someone can help making life liveable. Ekman gives the example of a mother whose daughter was raped and murdered and the fact that she hated the killer, but it helped her to continue with her own life. Ekman didn't think hate could be useful, until he heard this story which changed his mind. The second interesting thing is that Ekman distinguishes at least sixteen forms of enjoyment, because they all have a different kind of feeling and have a different origin. The third interesting thing is probably my most favourite and an eye-opener to me. It's his statement that we see the world in a way that confirm our emotions. Emotions are some kind of glasses which we wear when we look at the world. And we aren't looking for things that reject the way we feel, or that oppose the way we feel; we see everything in a way that confirms our emotions.
  
  I really enjoyed reading Emotions Revealed. Ekman has a great writing style. He can formulate beautiful and interesting sentences, refers to research of others and gives his opinion whether he agrees of disagrees (or disagreed) with certain statements. The book isn't written in a difficult way, and even when it becomes a bit difficult/theoretical, Ekman uses many example to make it easier to understand. I enjoyed it and learned some new things as well. I can recommend this book!
• 
  Peter

  I simply expected more. I didn't find the situational examples useful, but I was fascinated by Ekman's research. Although it's not totally relevant from the perspective of the main topic, it somehow disappointed me right at the beginning when Ekman wrote, I quote "AIDS is such a virus." Such a well-researched scientist can't leave a mistake like that in his book! AIDS is not a virus but a set of symptoms and illnesses that occur at the final stage of HIV infection. HIV is a virus. AIDS is not. I just felt a good publisher should have spotted this.
• 
  Tom

  I have picked up and tried to read this book three times since I first got it 18 years ago and I kept forgetting the reason why. This book could have been so good, the subject is a fascinating one but the author manages to make it so boring that I was skim reading towards the end and I felt anger at having spent money on this 18 years ago.
  
  I would avoid this, it's over long and, at least for me, extremely difficult to read and has lots of unnecessary filler. There are much better books on this type of subject. I give it two stars because it does have some interesting pictures.
• 
  Gritcan Elena

  Recomand tuturor celor care vor sa își înțeleagă atât emoțiile proprii cât și a celor din jurul sau. Cum deosebim un zâmbet fals de unul adevărat sau cum ne dam seama ca suntem în pragul unei explozii de furie și multe alte cercetări și deosebiri frumoase le găsiți în aceste pagini. De asemenea mai recomand celor care o citesc sa tragă un ochi și peste programul The Atlas of emotions dezvoltat tot de dr Ekman, e un fel de rezuma care întărește cunoștințele aflate din aceasta carte
• 
  Alex Railean

  The book has lots of photos that illustrate the author's point. The author's collection of annotated photos could be a good training set for a neural network.
• 
  Theut

  Paul Ekman: il maestro delle espressioni e di come rivelano le emozioni. Utili gli esempi pratici (le foto con le diverse micro espressioni) per capire a cosa davvero ci si riferisce.