see page history
Overview edit
Bibliography
-
(2003)
Emotions Revealed
-
(1985)
Telling Lies : Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage
-
Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research and Review
-
Unmasking the Face
-
Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage Truthfulness
Personal edit
- Legal name: Paul Ekman
- Birthdate: February 15, 1934 (age 78)
- Birthplace: Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States of America
- Nationality: American
- Gender: Male
- Official Website: http://www.paulekman.com/
- Genres: Psychology, Physiognomy
Unbound edit
This content section has been deprecated.
Please help us clean up the page by moving the content from this section into other relevant sections. Once it has been emptied this section will no longer appear on the page but the edit history will still be available in the page's history.
{{ media("<object width="640" height="385"></object>", 300, 300) }}
For 32 years, Paul Ekman was a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago and New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Adelphi University in 1958 after spending a year in clinical internship at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, part of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
He served as chief psychologist in the U.S. Army, Fort Dix New Jersey from 1958-1960. On discharge he returned to UCSF where he held a three year postdoctoral research fellowship. He then initiated his research program supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the DOD, loosely affiliated with UCSF. In 1972 he was appointed Professor of Psychology at UCSF.
His interests have focused on two separate but related topics. He originally focused on ‘nonverbal’ behavior, and by the mid-60’s concentrated on the expression and physiology of emotion. His second interest is interpersonal deception.
Articles reporting on Dr. Ekman's work have appeared in Time Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Psychology Today, The New Yorker and others, both American and foreign. Numerous articles about his work have also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other national newspapers.
He has appeared on 48 Hours, Dateline, Good Morning America, 20/20, Larry King, Oprah, Johnny Carson and many other TV programs. He has also been featured on various public television programs such as News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and Bill Moyers' The Truth About Lying.
Ekman is co-author of Emotion in the Human Face (1971), Unmasking the Face (1975), Facial Action Coding System (1978), editor of Darwin and Facial Expression (1973), co-editor of Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (1982), Approaches to Emotion (1984), The Nature of Emotion (1994), What the Face Reveals (1997), and author of Face of Man (1980), Telling Lies (1985, paperback, 1986, second edition, 1992, third edition, 2001,fourth edition,2009 with new chapter), Why Kids Lie (1989, paperback 1991), and Emotions Revealed, (2003, ). And co-authored the book Emotional Awareness, (2008) with the Dalai Lama.He is the editor of the third edition of Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1998). He has published more than 100 articles.
Ekman received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago and Geneva University, was named one of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century by the American Psychological Association, and was selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2009. In addition to consulting with government, researching deadly intent, developing and marketing online training on deception, he is deeply involved in the TV program Lie To Me which is based on his research on deception.
Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He is considered one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century.<1> The background of Ekman's research analyzes the development of human traits and states over time (Keltner, 2007). The character Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) of the television series Lie to Me is based on Dr. Ekman and his work.
Biography
Ekman was born in 1934 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Newark, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, and Southern California.
At the University of Chicago, his classmates included Susan Sontag, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May. <2>
He received a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1971, which was renewed in 1976, 1981, 1987, 1991, and 1997. For over forty years, NIMH supported his research through fellowships, grants, and awards.
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). From 1960 to 2004 he worked at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute.
He was named one of the top Time 100 most influential people in the May 11, 2009 edition of Time magazine.<3>
He is the son of a pediatrician.
<edit> Work
Ekman's work on facial expressions had its starting point in the work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins.<4> Ekman showed that contrary to the belief of some anthropologists including Margaret Mead, facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and thus biological in origin. Expressions he found to be universal included those indicating anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized.<5>
In a research project along with Dr. Maureen O'Sullivan, called the Wizards Project (previously named the Diogenes Project), Ekman reported on facial "microexpressions" which could be used to assist in lie detection. After testing a total of 20,000 people<6> from all walks of life, he found only 50 people that had the ability to spot deception without any formal training. These naturals are also known as "Truth Wizards", or wizards of deception detection from demeanor.<7>
He developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression. Ekman conducted and published research on a wide 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.
In his profession he also uses verbal signs of lying. When interviewed about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he mentioned that he could detect that former President Bill Clinton was lying because he used distancing language.<8>
Ekman has contributed much to the study of social aspects of lying, why we lie,<9> and why we are often unconcerned with detecting lies.<10> He is currently on the Editorial Board of Greater Good magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley. His contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. Ekman is also working with Computer Vision researcher Dimitris Metaxas on designing a visual lie-detector.<11>
<edit> Emotion classification
Ekman devised a list of basic emotions from cross-cultural research on the Fore tribesmen of Papua New Guinea. He observed that members of an isolated culture could reliably identify the expressions of emotion in photographs of people from cultures with which the Fore were not yet familiar. They could also ascribe facial expressions to descriptions of situations. On this evidence, he concluded that the expressions associated with some emotions were basic or biologically universal to all humans.<12> The following is Ekman's (1972) list of basic emotions:
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Surprise
However in the 1990s Ekman expanded his list of basic emotions, including a range of positive and negative emotions not all of which are encoded in facial muscles<13>. The newly included emotions are:
Amusement
Contempt
Contentment
Embarrassment
Excitement
Guilt
Pride in achievement
Relief
Satisfaction
Sensory pleasure
Shame
As a researcher and an authority, Dr. Ekman had a steadfast rule that he and his associates would not comment on public officials, those seeking public office, litigants, or those with impending litigation.<citation needed>
<edit> Educational innovations
Paul Ekman was recently featured in Greater Good Magazine's latest issue on Trust. In this issue, Ekman and daughter Eve are interviewed on parent-child trust. The main topic of the interview focuses on the benefits of trusting your children, how to encourage trustworthy behavior, and what it takes to build trust between parents and children. Ekman is a contributor to Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley.
On February 27, 2009, he was a guest presenter at the Science of a Meaningful Life seminar "Building Compassion, Creating Well-being", along with University of California, Berkeley and Greater Good Science Center Executive Director Dacher Keltner. Together they covered strategies for building resilience, reducing stress, and strengthening relationships with colleagues, clients, family, and friends.
<edit> Criticism
Ekman's work, particularly its applications to airport security via the Transportation Security Administration's "Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques" (SPOT) program, has been criticized for not having been subjected to controlled scientific tests.<14> A 2007 report on SPOT stated that "simply put, people (including professional lie-catchers with extensive experience of assessing veracity) would achieve similar hit rates if they flipped a coin".<15> Ekman no longer publishes details of his recent work in peer-reviewed journals, asserting that this is a deliberate strategy to avoid aiding scientists in countries that the United States considers a potential threat.<14>
<edit> See also
Body language
Emotions and Culture
Emotion classification
Microexpression
Nonverbal communication
Lie to Me (TV series)
Diogenes Project
<edit> References
^ Haggbloom, S. J. et al. (2002). The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. Review of General Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–15. Haggbloom and his team combined 3 quantitative variables: citations in professional journals, citations in textbooks, and nominations in a survey given to members of the Association for Psychological Science, with 3 qualitative variables (converted to quantitative scores): National Academy of Science (NAS) membership, American Psychological Association (APA) President and/or recipient of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. Then the list was rank ordered. Ekman was #59. (A list of the first 25 names, in order, can be found under "Historically important writers" at Template:Psychology.)
^ http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Ekman/ekman-con1.html
^ The 2009 TIME 100: Paul Ekman, Scientists & Thinkers. Time. April 30, 2009.
^ "FAQS Investigators Guide - Acknowledgements". http://www.face-and-emotion.com/dataface/facs/guide/FACSIVAk.html. Retrieved 2 September 2009.
^ Matsumoto, David (1992) "More evidence for the universality of a contempt expression". Motivation and Emotion. Springer Netherlands. Volume 16, Number 4 / December, 1992. Abstract
^ Camilleri, J., "Truth Wizard knows when you've been lying", Chicago Sun-Times, January 21, 2009
^ "NPR: The Face Never Lies". http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/01/23/08.
^ "The lie detective: San Francisco psychologist has made a science of reading facial expressions" by Julian Guthrie, San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, September 16, 2002.
^ Book: Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage Truthfulness
^ Ekman, P., 1996: Why don't we catch liars
^ "Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin" by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch report, November 4th, 2005.
^ Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. V (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: Categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica, 1, 49–98.
^ Paul Ekman (1999). Basic Emotions. In T. Dalgleish and M. Power (Eds.). Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. Sussex, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
^ a b http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100526/full/465412a.html
^ Hontz, C. R., Hartwig, M., Kleinman, S. M. & Meissner, C. A. Credibility Assessment at Portals, Portals Committee Report (2009).
<edit> Books
Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion (Times Books, 2008) ISBN 0805087125
Unmasking the Face ISBN 1883536367
Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (Times Books, 2003) ISBN 080507516X
Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (W. W. Norton & Company, 1985) ISBN 0393321886
What the Face Reveals (with Rosenberg, E. L., Oxford University Press, 1998) ISBN 0195104463
The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (with R. Davidson, Oxford University Press, 1994) 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 (Penguin, 1991) ISBN 014014322X
Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research ISBN 0521280729
Face of Man ISBN 0824071301
Emotion in the Human Face ISBN 0080166431
Handbook of Cognition and Emotion (Sussex, U.K. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 1999)
<edit> Additional
Keltner, D. (2007). Evolutionary approaches to emotion. California: UC Berkeley.
Freitas-Magalhães, A. (2009). The Ekman Code or in Praise of the Science of the Human Face. In A. Freitas-Magalhães (Ed.), Emotional Expression: The Brain and The Face (pp.ix-xvii). Porto: University Fernando Pessoa Press. ISBN 978-989-643-034-4.
For 32 years, Paul Ekman was a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago and New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Adelphi University in 1958 after spending a year in clinical internship at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, part of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
He served as chief psychologist in the U.S. Army, Fort Dix New Jersey from 1958-1960. On discharge he returned to UCSF where he held a three year postdoctoral research fellowship. He then initiated his research program supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the DOD, loosely affiliated with UCSF. In 1972 he was appointed Professor of Psychology at UCSF.
His interests have focused on two separate but related topics. He originally focused on ‘nonverbal’ behavior, and by the mid-60’s concentrated on the expression and physiology of emotion. His second interest is interpersonal deception.
Articles reporting on Dr. Ekman's work have appeared in Time Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Psychology Today, The New Yorker and others, both American and foreign. Numerous articles about his work have also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other national newspapers.
He has appeared on 48 Hours, Dateline, Good Morning America, 20/20, Larry King, Oprah, Johnny Carson and many other TV programs. He has also been featured on various public television programs such as News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and Bill Moyers' The Truth About Lying.
Ekman is co-author of Emotion in the Human Face (1971), Unmasking the Face (1975), Facial Action Coding System (1978), editor of Darwin and Facial Expression (1973), co-editor of Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (1982), Approaches to Emotion (1984), The Nature of Emotion (1994), What the Face Reveals (1997), and author of Face of Man (1980), Telling Lies (1985, paperback, 1986, second edition, 1992, third edition, 2001,fourth edition,2009 with new chapter), Why Kids Lie (1989, paperback 1991), and Emotions Revealed, (2003, ). And co-authored the book Emotional Awareness, (2008) with the Dalai Lama.He is the editor of the third edition of Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1998). He has published more than 100 articles.
Ekman received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago and Geneva University, was named one of the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th century by the American Psychological Association, and was selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2009. In addition to consulting with government, researching deadly intent, developing and marketing online training on deception, he is deeply involved in the TV program Lie To Me which is based on his research on deception.
Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is a psychologist who has been a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He is considered one of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the twentieth century.<1> The background of Ekman's research analyzes the development of human traits and states over time (Keltner, 2007). The character Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) of the television series Lie to Me is based on Dr. Ekman and his work.
Biography
Ekman was born in 1934 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Newark, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, and Southern California.
At the University of Chicago, his classmates included Susan Sontag, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May. <2>
He received a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1971, which was renewed in 1976, 1981, 1987, 1991, and 1997. For over forty years, NIMH supported his research through fellowships, grants, and awards.
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). From 1960 to 2004 he worked at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute.
He was named one of the top Time 100 most influential people in the May 11, 2009 edition of Time magazine.<3>
He is the son of a pediatrician.
<edit> Work
Ekman's work on facial expressions had its starting point in the work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins.<4> Ekman showed that contrary to the belief of some anthropologists including Margaret Mead, facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and thus biological in origin. Expressions he found to be universal included those indicating anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized.<5>
In a research project along with Dr. Maureen O'Sullivan, called the Wizards Project (previously named the Diogenes Project), Ekman reported on facial "microexpressions" which could be used to assist in lie detection. After testing a total of 20,000 people<6> from all walks of life, he found only 50 people that had the ability to spot deception without any formal training. These naturals are also known as "Truth Wizards", or wizards of deception detection from demeanor.<7>
He developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression. Ekman conducted and published research on a wide 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.
In his profession he also uses verbal signs of lying. When interviewed about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he mentioned that he could detect that former President Bill Clinton was lying because he used distancing language.<8>
Ekman has contributed much to the study of social aspects of lying, why we lie,<9> and why we are often unconcerned with detecting lies.<10> He is currently on the Editorial Board of Greater Good magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley. His contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. Ekman is also working with Computer Vision researcher Dimitris Metaxas on designing a visual lie-detector.<11>
<edit> Emotion classification
Ekman devised a list of basic emotions from cross-cultural research on the Fore tribesmen of Papua New Guinea. He observed that members of an isolated culture could reliably identify the expressions of emotion in photographs of people from cultures with which the Fore were not yet familiar. They could also ascribe facial expressions to descriptions of situations. On this evidence, he concluded that the expressions associated with some emotions were basic or biologically universal to all humans.<12> The following is Ekman's (1972) list of basic emotions:
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Surprise
However in the 1990s Ekman expanded his list of basic emotions, including a range of positive and negative emotions not all of which are encoded in facial muscles<13>. The newly included emotions are:
Amusement
Contempt
Contentment
Embarrassment
Excitement
Guilt
Pride in achievement
Relief
Satisfaction
Sensory pleasure
Shame
As a researcher and an authority, Dr. Ekman had a steadfast rule that he and his associates would not comment on public officials, those seeking public office, litigants, or those with impending litigation.<citation needed>
<edit> Educational innovations
Paul Ekman was recently featured in Greater Good Magazine's latest issue on Trust. In this issue, Ekman and daughter Eve are interviewed on parent-child trust. The main topic of the interview focuses on the benefits of trusting your children, how to encourage trustworthy behavior, and what it takes to build trust between parents and children. Ekman is a contributor to Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley.
On February 27, 2009, he was a guest presenter at the Science of a Meaningful Life seminar "Building Compassion, Creating Well-being", along with University of California, Berkeley and Greater Good Science Center Executive Director Dacher Keltner. Together they covered strategies for building resilience, reducing stress, and strengthening relationships with colleagues, clients, family, and friends.
<edit> Criticism
Ekman's work, particularly its applications to airport security via the Transportation Security Administration's "Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques" (SPOT) program, has been criticized for not having been subjected to controlled scientific tests.<14> A 2007 report on SPOT stated that "simply put, people (including professional lie-catchers with extensive experience of assessing veracity) would achieve similar hit rates if they flipped a coin".<15> Ekman no longer publishes details of his recent work in peer-reviewed journals, asserting that this is a deliberate strategy to avoid aiding scientists in countries that the United States considers a potential threat.<14>
<edit> See also
Body language
Emotions and Culture
Emotion classification
Microexpression
Nonverbal communication
Lie to Me (TV series)
Diogenes Project
<edit> References
^ Haggbloom, S. J. et al. (2002). The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. Review of General Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–15. Haggbloom and his team combined 3 quantitative variables: citations in professional journals, citations in textbooks, and nominations in a survey given to members of the Association for Psychological Science, with 3 qualitative variables (converted to quantitative scores): National Academy of Science (NAS) membership, American Psychological Association (APA) President and/or recipient of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. Then the list was rank ordered. Ekman was #59. (A list of the first 25 names, in order, can be found under "Historically important writers" at Template:Psychology.)
^ http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Ekman/ekman-con1.html
^ The 2009 TIME 100: Paul Ekman, Scientists & Thinkers. Time. April 30, 2009.
^ "FAQS Investigators Guide - Acknowledgements". http://www.face-and-emotion.com/dataface/facs/guide/FACSIVAk.html. Retrieved 2 September 2009.
^ Matsumoto, David (1992) "More evidence for the universality of a contempt expression". Motivation and Emotion. Springer Netherlands. Volume 16, Number 4 / December, 1992. Abstract
^ Camilleri, J., "Truth Wizard knows when you've been lying", Chicago Sun-Times, January 21, 2009
^ "NPR: The Face Never Lies". http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/01/23/08.
^ "The lie detective: San Francisco psychologist has made a science of reading facial expressions" by Julian Guthrie, San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, September 16, 2002.
^ Book: Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage Truthfulness
^ Ekman, P., 1996: Why don't we catch liars
^ "Meet the New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin" by Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch report, November 4th, 2005.
^ Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. V (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: Categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica, 1, 49–98.
^ Paul Ekman (1999). Basic Emotions. In T. Dalgleish and M. Power (Eds.). Handbook of Cognition and Emotion. Sussex, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
^ a b http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100526/full/465412a.html
^ Hontz, C. R., Hartwig, M., Kleinman, S. M. & Meissner, C. A. Credibility Assessment at Portals, Portals Committee Report (2009).
<edit> Books
Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion (Times Books, 2008) ISBN 0805087125
Unmasking the Face ISBN 1883536367
Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (Times Books, 2003) ISBN 080507516X
Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (W. W. Norton & Company, 1985) ISBN 0393321886
What the Face Reveals (with Rosenberg, E. L., Oxford University Press, 1998) ISBN 0195104463
The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (with R. Davidson, Oxford University Press, 1994) 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 (Penguin, 1991) ISBN 014014322X
Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research ISBN 0521280729
Face of Man ISBN 0824071301
Emotion in the Human Face ISBN 0080166431
Handbook of Cognition and Emotion (Sussex, U.K. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 1999)
<edit> Additional
Keltner, D. (2007). Evolutionary approaches to emotion. California: UC Berkeley.
Freitas-Magalhães, A. (2009). The Ekman Code or in Praise of the Science of the Human Face. In A. Freitas-Magalhães (Ed.), Emotional Expression: The Brain and The Face (pp.ix-xvii). Porto: University Fernando Pessoa Press. ISBN 978-989-643-034-4.
