Interview with Paul Ekman

About Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman, researcher and author

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 and 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. In addition to his basic research on emotion and its expression, he has, for the last thirty years, also been studying deceit.

Currently, Paul Ekman is the director of the Paul Ekman Group, LLC (PEG), a company dedicated to providing excellent training in the fields of facial expression, gesture, emotion, and deception. Using tools such as their Micro Expression Training Tool (METT), PEG provides training to a diverse group of companies and industries including; Government and Police departments, Fortune 500 companies in consulting and training capacities, Medical and Therapy professionals, Researchers, Students, and the General Public.

About the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT)

Most facial expressions last for two or three seconds and can easily be seen and deciphered, but what cannot be easily seen are "micro expressions" as they last for only 1/25 of a second. Micro expressions only occur when individuals are deliberately concealing how they feel, or when they have repressed the emotions they are experiencing. Developed by the Paul Ekman Group, the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT) enables an individual to spot most micro expressions and shows how the facial expressions of anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, surprise and happiness are the same for all people. Visit the METTOnline website and click on Start Demo to learn more about microexpressions.

How did you get interested in studying facial expressions?

I started all of this research after observing psychotherapy as a graduate student, thinking a lot of what's going on isn't in the words. Mead's view which was that it was all a product of culture was the dominant view. But I knew the time was running out to answer that question and I found that Darwin was absolutely on the money. Facial expressions are seven that have a universal expression, doesn't matter what your culture. But gestures, symbolic gestures, things like, a-okay, are very culture specific.

"I started all of this research after observing psychotherapy as a graduate student, thinking a lot of what's going on isn't in the words."

I have spent more time looking at records of facial behaviour in different cultures I think than any human being alive. And I have seen everything the face can do. I've looked at situations where people are killing each other, I've looked at situations where spouses are beating on each other, I've looked at all kinds of psychiatric disorders, as well as conversations as well as bar room flirtations. All kinds of things. This is all a preface to say, I've never seen in any given conversation more than a few hundred different expressions.

What did you notice that was revolutionary?

I was looking at clinical interviews with psychiatric patients, some of whom had confessed that they had been concealing in the interview their intention to mislead their doctor into believing they were well enough to get a weekend pass and their intent was to take their life the moment they were free of supervision. So knowing that deception was occurring, I only had a few examples, a few interviews like this where the patient did confirm subsequently that this had occurred. I went through it in slow motion to see what I could find. And that's when I first saw micro-expression.

What are micro-expressions?

Micro-expressions occur with concealment of an emotion. Our emotions occur typically, there are involuntary changes in the face and the voice and to some extent to the posture. It's very hard not to move forward when you're angry, or for your head not to sink in sadness. But the displays on the face are very loud and clear, and yet, most of us have learned how to manage these expressions. Now when management occurs, they may be reduced in time, so that they're so brief that they only are apparent in this micro form which is totally involuntary. And usually, it's very successful, unless people have been trained, no one's going to see it. The thing that makes facial expression so invaluable, is that it's involuntary.

What's a common example of a micro-expression?

One of them is the social smile, just the lips without involving the muscle around the eye. Another is the raising of the eyebrows and the other is the furrowing of the eyebrows. That knocks out about 40 percent of what you see. Even that the frequency of some of these will tell you a fair amount. When you raise a brow or lower it for example; if I say to you, where were you last night? And I raise the brows, I know where you are. Now most people don't know that but if you knew that, that would make it very useful if you want to mislead me about where you were because you would know, by my brow movement that I already knew the answer.

What are the limitations of expressions?

"When people find out what I do, at a party, they often get very uncomfortable and say, oh I'm going to be very self-conscious because they think I'm reading their thoughts. That's the first thing I say to them, your demeanour doesn't tell me what you're thinking, it tells me what you feel about what you're thinking."

Expression doesn't tell you what the trigger is. So if I see a look of annoyance on your face, I don't know if you're annoyed with yourself, you're annoyed with what I just said, whether you're remembering a dispute that you had with one of your coworkers on your way to get here or you just recall that for some reason because I just used a phrase they had used. We don't know the trigger, emotion doesn't tell us its source. The second is, it doesn't tell us our target. So you could see annoyance and you don't know who's the recipient of that. Now with some skill you can start figuring some of these things out, but you have to be very careful not to presume you know the trigger and the target. All the face tells you is which emotion it is.

Can you give me a famous example of concealment? Where the ability to read micro-expressions could have been important?

The most atrocious example was at a meeting between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain had committed England to a course of action that presumed, mistakenly, that you could negotiate with Hitler. That by appeasing Hitler, he wouldn't go to war. And so England was really not well prepared, in terms of weaponry, and training with a large enough military to deal with Hitler if he was unmovable. After his meeting in 1938, he writes to his sister, "I could tell by the look on his face that Hitler means what he says". Hitler says to his generals, in conflicts, lying doesn't matter, victory matters. And Hitler was so excited in his success in misleading Chamberlain that during the meeting, he asked for a break and he went out into an anteroom (this is a report by one of his generals who survived until about ten or fifteen years ago) and he jumped up and down with joy. I call this duping-delight. He was so excited about deceiving Chamberlain. And he told Chamberlain of course that he would accept some concessions. He'd already given the orders for the attack on Poland. So why did Chamberlain believe him? Because he had to believe it or face the fact that he had put his country in great jeopardy. Many many people make this error, many politicians make this error.

Can people learn to see micro-expressions?

Most people can't see them, and yet, in an hour's training, with a tool that we've developed, a micro-expression training tool, people can now see them in real time. The micro-expression training tool is being used in the training of everybody, from the state department officers who will do interviews with you, if you're seeking a visa to enter this country, or if you are overseas and you get into trouble, you ask for help from an embassy or a consulate, the people who are going to come and help you are trained in their recognition of expression, in particular, concealed expression and that are catching people who are called malfeasants in the trade.

When people find out what I do, at a party, they often get very uncomfortable and say, oh I'm going to be very self-conscious because they think I'm reading their thoughts. That's the first thing I say to them, your demeanor doesn't tell me what you're thinking, it tells me what you feel about what you're thinking, but I don't know whether you're thinking about your mother who you can't stand, or whether you're thinking about a politician who you can't stand. So your thoughts remain invisible, okay?