Paul Ekman (15 of February of 1934) is an American psychologist known for being the precursor of the study on the emotions and facial expressions. One of his most renowned works has been the Diogenes Project, originally called Project Wizards, where the expert described facial microexpressions, which can be used for Detection of lies With a certain degree of reliability.
To facilitate the study of this postulate, Ekman also developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), a method to classify human expressions through the study of the movements associated with the muscles of the face .
Paul Ekman was born in 1934 in Washington DC, into a Jewish family. Her father was a pediatrician and her mother lawyer, who suffered from a Bipolar disorder Which led to suicide when Ekman was just a teenager. His family situation led him to become interested years later in psychotherapy.
Today Ekman is considered one of the 100 most outstanding psychologists in history and in 2009 was ranked as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Throughout his years, Ekman has had different jobs. From 1972 to 2004 he was Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, and has been an advisor to both the US Department of Defense and the FBI. He has also been awarded three times the Scientific Research Prize of the National Institute of Mental Health.
He also has several honorary doctorates and has written more than 100 articles published in major media such as the Greater Good magazine, University of Berkeley, Time magazine, Scientist America, The Washington Post, Usa Today and The New York Times.
In addition to his outstanding career, in 2001 he worked with actor John Cleese for the creation of the documentary called"The Human Face"of the BBC. On the other hand, his theories on the lie were the inspiration for the television series"Lie to Me", whose protagonist applies the patterns of Ekman to detect lies.
Ekman's Beginnings in Psychology
Paul Ekman's career began at an early age. At age 15 he took refuge in the University of Chicago, which at that time had a program that admitted bright students who had not finished high school. Ekman was one of them. In the university he began to know the world of intellectuals, he discovered the theories of Sigmund Freud And began to become interested in psychotherapy.
Ekman received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and New York University in 1955. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology at Adelphi University in 1958. He began his research on facial expressions and body movement in 1954, when he was still a student. That was the subject of his undergraduate thesis.
Although at the Adelphi University the focus of the studies was more on clinical practice and not on research, Ekman opted for the latter. In fact, after graduating, instead of engaging in psychotherapy, he devoted himself to observing sessions with therapists through a one-way mirror.
With these observations he discovered what would be the basis of his career: the relevance of non-verbal channels. Ekman understood that what happened in such sessions was not only transmitted through the verbal channels, but in fact, most of the information was transmitted through nonverbal channels such as facial expressions, gestures and even the tone of voice.
Ekman served for one year as an intern at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, the psychiatric hospital at the University of California (San Francisco). Shortly after finishing his career, he was recruited by the military, where he became the camp psychologist at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Although the soldiers did not seem to be very interested in the sessions, this work allowed him to obtain his first achievements as investigator, observing the conduct of the soldiers that deserted.
After spending two years as a clinical psychology officer in the army, in 1960 Ekman returned to the Langley Porter Institute, where he worked until 2004. It was there that he began his first research, which at that time focused only on the movements of the hand And gestures.
In 1971, the psychologist received the Scientific Research Prize, awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, a prize he would win five more times. This entity was in charge of supporting for more than 40 years the investigations of Paul Ekman.
Classification of emotions according to Paul Ekman
More than half of the information we communicate is transmitted through Nonverbal channels , As the expressions of our face. Ekman has based his career on this idea and has shown it in his various investigations. After returning to Langley Porter, the psychologist met the philosopher Sylvan Tomkins and his work on the non-verbal expression of emotions. This was his inspiration and the spearhead of what would come later in his career as a researcher.
Contrary to cultural anthropologists' belief, Ekman asserted that the expression of emotions had a universal biological root, so they did not depend on the culture in which the individual developed. However, he did not believe it all the time and was not the first to speak of it. Already in 1872 Charles Darwin Had proposed in his work" Expression of emotions in man and animals" The existence of a series of universal and innate expressions that were common to all human beings. Ekman did not think so, but at the start of one of his first investigations in the field, his vision changed.
Thanks to a scholarship he obtained, the scientist began an intercultural investigation to analyze the gestures and expression of emotions, and to determine if there were universal expressions that crossed all borders. For this he carried out his work with an ethnic group of Papua in New Guinea.
In asking the volunteers of this tribe to express in their faces the corresponding emotions, Ekman discovered that indeed they existed Six universal expressions Of emotions in the face. These people had never had contact with the western world and yet were able to recognize through photographs the different emotions expressed in the face of a person completely alien to their culture.
With this result, the scientist managed to classify these expressions, calling them basic emotions. In this way he established that all basic emotion is universal, primitive and independent of culture. In addition, they have a facial expression of their own, which activates brain In a specific way and is able to prepare the body for an action. These emotions are: joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.
It was from that moment that Ekman was dedicated to investigate both the expressions in humans and their interaction with the emotions that create them.
To continue his work, the psychologist developed a system to observe the muscles of the face. He spent years documenting each of the movements and expressions that generate the emotions. Although many of these muscles are easy to move, in the case of some others, Ekman had to resort to a fellow surgeon to electrically stimulate the muscle with needles to record the gesture he caused.
Thus was born in 1978 the Facial Coding System (FACS), a mechanism to identify every muscle and facial gesture. With all this work, Ekman managed to add another list of universal emotions, although he emphasized that unlike the basic emotions, not all these could be identified using facial expressions. Among these other emotions we can name: fun, shame, contempt, guilt, relief, satisfaction, pride for achievements, among others.
Facial micro-expressions for the detection of lies
But beyond the theory of universal basic emotions, Ekman also developed research related to the detection of lies. In the years he worked as a psychotherapist, the scientist discovered that some of his patients simulated certain emotions to obtain permits or greater freedom. When analyzing the facial expressions, Ekman and a colleague observed how these people tried to camouflage certain emotions.
Experts determined that there are two main sources by which people let go of their repressed affective expressions: subtle expressions and micro-expressions. In the first case, the person uses only a part of the musculature that he would normally use and he does so in order to show only a fragment of an emotion that he wants to hide. In the second case, these are expressions that last ten seconds and are totally unconscious and involuntary movements.
It has been precisely this theory of facial microexpression that has been applied in the world of the detection of lies. However, studying these expressions is not so simple. Due to the speed with which they occur, combined with gestures and body movement, not counting external elements such as lighting, they are very likely to be overlooked. That is why for a real study you need to work with a video recorded in high definition and see the images over and over again to identify each microexpression.
The researcher, in his book Telling Lies Explains how you can detect what someone is feeling, as well as deduce whether you are lying or telling the truth, all by analyzing their gestures and especially, microexpressions.
Today, this study has many applications in different fields: from criminology, psychology and medicine to the animation of 3D characters. In addition, Ekman and researcher Dimitris Metaxas are currently designing a visual lie detector.
Ekman's work has gone beyond books and even reached the small screen. In 2009 the American television network FOX premiered a series inspired by the work of the researcher. In Lie to Me, which had three seasons, the main character is an alter-ego of Paul Ekman and in the first 6 or 7 chapters of the series, Ekman's theory of microexpressions was clearly explained.
The Atlas of Emotions
One of Paul Ekman's most recent projects has been the Atlas of Emotions. The researcher created it at the request of the Dalai Lama , Who thought that in this modern world it is necessary to increase our understanding of how emotions influence what we do and what we say. The goal with this map was to help people have more constructive emotional experiences.
The Atlas of emotions, is a tool where each emotion is represented as a continent. These emotions, which are anger, fear, disgust, sadness and enjoyment, each tell their own states, moods, actions and triggers, that is, all the information necessary to evaluate and understand changing emotions.
When the work was published this year, Ekman said he had created the Atlas with the help of his daughter, Dr. Eve Ekman. For its elaboration, a survey was carried out among more than 100 scientists coming from fields like the psychology and the neurology so as to be able to reach a consensus on the operation of the emotional process. Ekman also commented that it was called Atlas because it contained more than one map, which allows people to see characteristics of our emotions that may not be apparent.
Ekman expects teachers to use this map in the classroom, which can be understood by an unexplained 9-year-old. He also hopes it will be used by therapists to help their patients have a better understanding of their emotions.