Paul Ekman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Ekman (born 1934) is a psychologist and has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions.
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[edit] Biography
Ekman was born in 1934 in Washington, DC, and grew up in Newark, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, and Southern California. He is the son of a pediatrician.
Ekman's carefully conducted experiments were a model of elegance for other psychologists and, in part, led to him being designated one of the 100 most important psychologists of the twentieth century by the American Psychological Association.
In 2001, Ekman collaborated with John Cleese for the BBC documentary series The Human Face.
He retired in 2004 as professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
[edit] Work
Contrary to the belief of some anthropologists at the time including Margaret Mead, Ekman found that facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal to human culture and thus biological in origin, as Charles Darwin had once theorized. Ekman's finding is now widely accepted by scientists. Expressions he found to be universal included anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence for its being universally recognized.
Ekman reported facial "microexpressions" that he showed could be used to reliably detect lying, in an effort called the Diogenes Project. He also developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression.
Ekman conducted and published research on a broad variety of topics in the general area of non-verbal behavior. His work on lying, for example, was not limited to the face, but also to observation of the rest of the body.
[edit] Books
- Unmasking the Face ISBN 1883536367
- Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life ISBN 080507516X
- Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage ISBN 0393321886
- What the Face Reveals ISBN 0195104463
- The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions ISBN 0195089448
- Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review ISBN 0122367502
- Facial Action Coding System/Investigator's ISBN 9993626619
- Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage Truthfulness ISBN 014014322X
- Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research ISBN 0521280729
- Face of Man ISBN 0824071301
- Emotion in the Human Face ISBN 0080166431
