Paul Ekman: biography and contributions of this student of emotions

Paul Eckman He has been a pioneer in the study of human emotions and their relationship with facial expressions, as well as being known and highlighted for being among the 100 most influential psychologists of the century.

During his nearly 40 years of research, Ekman came to discover that in our gestural repertoire there are about 10,000 facial expressions, but barely a third has emotional meaning.

Next we will know the life of this great scientist, his collaborations with the media and his main studies.

Biography of Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman's life has passed in different states of the United States and several renowned North American universities. His life took a sharp turn when he performed his service in the military, completely changing his main interest into behavioral science.

1. early years

Paul Ekman was born on February 15, 1934 in Washington D. C., United States, spending his childhood in different American states: New Jersey, Washington, Oregon and California. His father was a pediatrician and his mother was a lawyer. His sister, Joyce Steingart, is a well-known psychoanalytic psychologist who worked in New York City before retiring.

2. Academic training

Even without graduating from high school, at just 15 years old, Paul Ekman enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he would complete three years of training. It would be during his stay in that city where he would feel fascinated by group therapy and group dynamics.

Later, he would study for two years at New York University, finishing his studies in 1954. The subject of his first investigation, under the direction of his university professor, Margaret Tresselt, was an attempt to develop a test to understand how people might respond to anxiety therapy. group.

After this, Ekman would set foot on a new university, in this case Adelphi, in Garden City, New York, where he would study clinical psychology. While working on his master's degree, Ekman was awarded a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) University Fellowship in 1955. His master's thesis focused on facial expression and body movement.

After obtaining his doctorate, in 1958, Paul Ekman would spend a year as an intern at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute.

3. Military service

Although Ekman originally wanted to work in the field of psychotherapy, this desire changed when he was sent to the army in 1958, once he had completed his stay at Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. He served at Fort Dix, New Jersey, as a lieutenant general psychologist.

There he came up with the idea that research in psychology could be a powerful tool to change the training routines in the military, making them much more humane. This experience made him go from wanting to be a psychotherapist to wanting to be a researcher, with the intention that his findings would serve to help as many people as possible.

4. Career

After completing his military service in 1960, Ekman accepted a research associate position, along with Leonard Krasner, at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital. There he worked with psychiatric patients, studying their verbal behavior.

It was at this time that he had the opportunity to meet the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who was on the staff of that same hospital. That contact would serve Ekman so that, five years later, Bateson gave him films taken in Bali in the 1930s for his intercultural studies on expressions and gestures.

From 1960 to 1963, Ekman held an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship.. Thanks to this, he could work at San Francisco State College, conducting his first research as principal investigator at just 29 years old. From NIMH he too would receive an award, this time in 1963, for his studies of non-verbal behavior.

The money offered by the NIMH would be renewed continuously for the next 40 years, and would be what he would pay his salary until in 1972 he was accepted as a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Motivated by his friend and his teacher Silvan S. Tomkins, Ekman stopped focusing on body movement and focused on facial expressions. It was from this change of object of study that would result in his most famous book, "Telling Lies", known in Spanish as "How to detect lies" in 1985.

Paul Ekman would retire in 2004 as a professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at the University of California. From 1960 to 2004, he continued to work at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, albeit on a limited basis and as a consultant on various clinical cases. After his retirement, Ekman founded the “Paul Ekman Group” and the “Paul Ekman International”.

Influence and collaboration with the media

In 2001 Paul Ekman collaborated with the BBC's John Cleese for the documentary "The Human Face". From his jump to the small screen as an expert voice in the expression of human emotions, Ekman would be constantly referenced in another television series, "Lie to Me" ("Lie to me"), whose protagonist, Dr. Lightman is inspired by Ekman. In fact, Ekman himself served as science advisor for the series, even giving the actors directions on how to mimic facial expressions.

Despite the fact that he was already retired, Ekman did not miss the opportunity to collaborate with the Pixar film "Inside Out", also known in the Hispanic world as "From the reverse", from 2015. In fact, Ekman even wrote a guide to make the film work as a guide for parents when it comes to talking about emotions with their children.

What should be clear about the figure of Ekman is that, either because of his research, because of the 15 books that he has writing or for having collaborated in the projects that we have just observed, this psychologist is considered a great Referrer. In fact, he was listed among the 100 most influential people in Time magazine's May 2009 issue. He also occupies the 50th position on the list of the most influential psychologists of the 21st century, according to the Archives of Scientific Psychology in 2014.

Research

Among the main investigations in which Paul Ekman has been involved or has been the principal investigator, we can highlight the following:

1. Non-verbal communication and its empirical measurement

The interest in non-verbal communication was what led Paul Ekman to present the first publication of his in 1957. In this research he highlighted the difficulty in developing tools to measure nonverbal communication empirically.

It was then that Ekman focused on developing techniques to objectively and accurately measure non-verbal communication. Based on these studies, Ekman observed that facial muscle movements create facial expressions that can be identified through empirical research. In fact, he saw that human beings are capable of making about 10,000 facial expressions, but only a third of them are relevant in the expression and interpretation of emotions.

2. universal emotions

The idea that emotions are evolutionary traits that occur universally in all human beings is not something new. already the same Charles Darwin, in her book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals published" of 1872 she raised this idea.

However, in the 1950s a more or less opposite conception was held, especially among anthropologists. The belief was that facial expressions and their attributed meanings were determined through behavioral learning. One of the most relevant figures of this belief was the anthropologist Margaret Mead, who had traveled to different countries and had observed how different the non-verbal communication of culture was in culture.

Through various studies, Paul Ekman observed that there were emotions that could be considered universal, looking at both Western and Eastern literate cultures. Among the emotions he observed manifesting across cultures were: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Another emotion, that of contempt, was not so clear that it was universal, although later studies seemed to indicate that it was.

Working with Wallace V. Friesen was able to show that these finds were also attributable to the preliterate tribes of Papua New Guinea, cultures that had not been able to learn the expressions through modern means of communication, since they lacked they. What Friesen and Ekman observed from these studies was that there were certain emotions that were exhibited in very specific ways, heavily influenced by cultural norms. It would be these specific rules that would explain the existence of differences when expressing universal emotions between cultures.

During the 1990s, Ekman proposed an expanded list of basic emotions, both positive and negative, not all of which are encoded by facial movements. These "new" emotions were: relief, embarrassment, contentment, guilt, amusement, contempt, enthusiasm, happiness, anger, fear, sadness, pride, sensory pleasure, disgust, satisfaction, surprise, and shame.

Bibliographic references:

• Eckman, P. (2009). Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage
• Eckman, P. (2008). Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion
• Ekman, P.; Cohen, L.; Moos, R.; Raine, W.; Schlesinger, M.; Stone, G. (1963). Divergent Reactions to the Threat of War. Science. 139 (3550): 88–94.
• Eckman, P. (1957). "A methodological discussion of nonverbal behavior". Journal of Psychology. 43: 141–49.