Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life » (Second Edition)

A world-renowned expert on facial expression, emotion, and deception, Paul Ekman, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco and a frequent adviser to police, antiterrorism groups, and the animation studio Pixar. He is the author of fourteen books, including Telling Lies. He lives in San Francisco.

A fascinating exploration of how we interpret and experience emotions-and how we can improve our emotional skills-by a pioneering psychologist

A renowned expert in nonverbal communication, Paul Ekman has led a revolution in our scientific understanding of emotions. Now he assembles his pathbreaking research and theories in a comprehensive look at human emotional life.

Emotions Revealed explores the evolutionary essence of anger, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and happiness. Drawing on his fieldwork investigating universal facial expressions in Papua New Guinea and his analysis of the prognosis of hospital patients based on their emotional profile, Ekman shows that emotions are deeply imbedded in the human species. In the process, he answers such questions as: What triggers emotions and can we stop them? How does our body signal to others whether we are slightly sad or anguished, peeved or enraged? Can we learn to distinguish between a polite smile and the genuine thing?

Unique exercises and photographs help readers identify emotions in themselves and others. Emotions Revealed is a practical, mind-opening, and potentially life-changing exploration of science and self.

Publishers Weekly

Emotions are what "make life livable," writes psychologist Ekman in this unique hands-on volume that flirts shrewdly with psychology and anthropology. His 40-odd years of research have led him to the conclusion (originally presented by Charles Darwin) that emotions, and their 10,000 facial expressions, are largely universal. While an American smile may look much like a grin expressed by a Fore tribesman of Papua New Guinea, what actually triggers the toothy twinkle is culturally, socially and even individually determined. Emotions theselves can't be turned off, but they can be controlled, and Ekman draws upon the Buddhist concept of mindfulness to explain how, by tuning in to one's own emotional triggers, one can develop a heightened "attentiveness," thereby side-stepping future blowouts. Ekman addresses in detail the "cascade of changes" that occur physiologically in an individual in the throes of one of five salient emotional categories (sadness, anger, fear, disgust and enjoyment). In his engaging style, he asks his readers to conjure these emotions by studying photographs, meditating upon their own experiences and, if that fails, to contort their faces into specific expressions, for Ekman has found that physical manifestations actually generate corresponding emotional responses in the brain. It is Ekman's hope that once these expressions have been identified, his readers will benefit from an increased sensitivity, and will possess the skills necessary for approaching others gripped with apparent emotion. 100 b&w photos (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Acknowledgments     xiii
Preface to the Second Edition     xv
Introduction     xvii
Emotions Across Cultures     1
When Do We Become Emotional?     17
Changing What We Become Emotional About     38
Behaving Emotionally     52
Sadness and Agony     82
Anger     110
Surprise and Fear     148
Disgust and Contempt     172
Enjoyable Emotions     190
Lies and Emotions     213
Conclusion: Living with Emotion     231
Afterword     237
Reading Faces-The Test     241
Notes     263
Illustration Credits     279
Index     281