Paul Ekman: biography and contributions of this scholar of emotions.

A great research psychologist who dedicated a great part of his life to the study of facial expressions.

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

During his almost 40 years of research, Ekman came to discover that in our gestural repertoire there are some 10,000 facial expressions, but only a third of them have meaning.but barely a third of them have emotional meaning.

Here we will learn about the life of this great scientist, his collaborations with the media and his main studies.

Biography of Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman's life has taken place in different states of the United States and several renowned American universities. His life took an abrupt turn when he served in the army, completely changing his main interest in behavioral science.

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. Educational background

Without even graduating from high school, at the age of 15, Paul Ekman enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he completed three years of training. It was during his stay in that city that he became 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 research, under the direction of his university professor, Margaret Tresselt, was an attempt to develop a test to understand how people might respond to group therapy.

After this, Ekman would set foot in a new university, in this case Adelphi University, in Garden City, New York, where he would study clinical psychology. While working on his master's degree, Ekman was awarded a university scholarship from the American National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) 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, after he had finished his stay at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. He served at Fort Dix, New Jersey, as a psychologist lieutenant general.

It was there that he got the idea that research in psychology could be a powerful tool to change 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 of using his findings to help as many people as possible.

4. Professional career

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

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

From 1960 to 1963, Ekman held a postdoctoral fellowship from the NIMH.. Thanks to this, he would be able to work at San Francisco State College, conducting his first research as a principal investigator at the age of 29. He also received another award from the NIMH, this time in 1963, for his studies on nonverbal behavior.

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

Motivated by his friend and professor 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 "Cómo detectar mentiras" in 1985.

Paul Ekman retired in 2004 as 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 "Paul Ekman International".

Influence and collaboration with the media

In 2001 Paul Ekman collaborated with John Cleese of the BBC 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", whose protagonist, Dr. Lightman, is inspired by Ekman. In fact, Ekman himself served as a scientific advisor for the series, even giving directions to the actors on how to mimic facial expressions.

Despite the fact that he was already retired, Ekman did not miss the opportunity to collaborate with Pixar's 2015 film "Inside Out," also known in the Spanish-speaking world as "Del revés." In fact, Ekman even wrote a guide to make the film serve as a guide for parents when talking about emotions with their children.

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

Research

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

1. Nonverbal communication and its empirical measurement.

The interest in nonverbal communication was what led Paul Ekman to present his first publication in 1957. This research 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 nonverbal 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 humans are capable of about 10,000 facial expressions, but only one third of them are relevant to 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 new. Charles Darwin himself, in his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals published" of 1872, already put forward this idea.

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

Through several studies, Paul Ekman observed that there were emotions that could be considered universal, observing both Western and Eastern literate cultures. Among the emotions he observed that manifested themselves in all cultures were: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. Another emotion, 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 findings were also attributable to the preliterate tribes of Papua New Guinea, cultures that had not been able to learn expressions through modern means of communication, since they lacked them. What Friesen and Ekman observed on the basis of these studies was that there were certain emotions that were exhibited in a very specific way, heavily influenced by cultural rules. It would be these specific rules that would explain the existence of differences in the expression of 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. Estas “nuevas” emociones eran: alivio, bochorno, contento, culpa, diversión, desprecio, entusiasmo, felicidad, ira, miedo, tristeza, orgullo, placer sensorial, repugnancia, satisfacción, sorpresa y vergüenza.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• Ekman, P. (2009). Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (Cómo detectar mentiras)
• Ekman, 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.
• Ekman, P. (1957). "A methodological discussion of nonverbal behavior". Journal of Psychology. 43: 141–49.