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Emotions revealed
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Excerpts taken from :
EMOTIONS REVEALED
by
Paul Ekman
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APPRAISAL AWARENESS
Nature doesn’t make it easy for us to achieve conscious
awareness of the first moments when an emotion arises, let
alone how we automatically make the appraisals of the world
around us that generate our emotions. It is nearly impossible
for most people ever to become aware of the automatic
appraisal processes that initiate an emotional episode. Dan
Goleman called this appraisal awareness.
But through hard work, by developing skills nature doesn’t
provide and doesn’t make it easy for us to acquire, some
people can learn impulse awareness, that is, becoming aware of
an emotion-driven impulse before actions are taken.
I don’t believe emotions evolved in a way to facilitate
impulse awareness. It is as if the emotion system doesn’t want
our conscious mind to interfere in the matter. More than
forty-five years ago Frank Gorman, my psychotherapy supervisor,
said that my goal should be to help my patients increase the
gap between impulse and action.
The Buddhists talk about recognizing the spark (that arises to
initiate an emotion) before the flame (by which they mean the
emotional behavior that enacts the emotion). They do not ask
us to recognize the appraisal that generates the spark. The
Western and Buddhist views on this are the same.
Impulse awareness is a high standard. I don’t believe everyone
can reach it, and it is unlikely that even those who meet this
standard will always do so. But the work we go through to
develop impulse awareness will benefit what is achievable for
nearly all of us—emotional behavior awareness, or recognizing
our emotional state once it has begun to be expressed in words
and actions. If you can become aware that an emotion has begun
to drive your behavior, you can consciously consider whether
your emotional reaction is appropriate to the situation you
are in, and, if it is, whether your reaction is at the right
intensity and manifesting itself in the most constructive way.
...
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
The very practice of learning to focus attention on an
automatic process that requires no conscious monitoring
creates the capacity to be attentive to other automatic
processes.
We breathe without thinking, without conscious direction of
each inhalation and exhalation. Nature does not require that
we divert our attention to breathing. When we try paying
attention to each breath, people find it very hard to do so
for more than a minute, if that, without being distracted by
thoughts. Learning to focus our attention on breathing takes
daily practice, in which we develop new neural pathways that
allow us to do it.
And here is the punch line: these skills transfer to other
automatic processes—benefiting emotional behavior awareness
and eventually, in some people, impulse awareness. I checked
my explanation with renowned experts in meditation, and with
those in emotion and the brain, and they think it makes sense.
I recommend trying mindfulness meditation to see if it works
for you. As I said, it won’t be easy, and it probably won’t be
of much benefit to your emotional life unless pursued
regularly. In every large city the telephone book lists
meditation teaching, often available without cost.
...
MICRO EXPRESSIONS
Micro expressions are also very difficult for most people to
see. Typically they are very intense and very brief, as short
as 1/25 of a second. Micro expressions are always the result
of concealment. It may be deliberate, in which the people
showing them know exactly how they are feeling but don’t want
others to know. Or the concealment may be the consequence of
repression, in which case the person is totally unaware of the
concealed emotion the micro expression is displaying. It is
important to note that not everyone who is concealing emotion
shows a micro expression, so its absence does not mean you are
getting the full story. But its presence is highly informative
if you are able to see it.
...
Don’t presume you know what is causing the emotion you have
spotted. Emotional expressions don’t reveal their source. A
micro expression of anger doesn’t tell you the person is angry
with you. The person might be angry with him- or herself. Or
the person might be remembering an earlier event about which
he or she felt angry.
...
GENERAL GUIDELINES
Here I want to give some general guidelines that apply to any
emotional information you pick up in a subtle or micro
expression. Often the best course is to say nothing about what
you have seen. Instead, be alert to the possibilities.
Or you might say: “Is there anything more you want to say
about how you are feeling?” A further step could be: “I had
the impression you were just feeling something more than what
you said.” You might even be more specific, asking about the
emotion you spotted.
How you respond depends on the nature of the relationship, its
past history and intended future, and your knowledge of that
person. You may not always be entitled to comment, even
vaguely, on the emotion you have detected. Although I believe
that generally relationships work better when people
understand and acknowledge how each other feel, that isn’t
always so. Be cautious; don’t make the other person feel that
he or she has no privacy.
Skills are hard to acquire; some of them require continued
practice to maintain, such as the awareness skills I have just
described.Some of them are like learning to ride a bicycle;
once learned it sticks, and you don’t need to continue
practice.
Paul Ekman
(c)
Dr Paul Ekman, 2003. Extracted from EMOTIONS REVEALED by Dr
Paul Ekman, published in English by Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd,
part of The Orion Publishiing Group, London. |
Who is PAUL EKMAN?
Paul Ekman, Ph.D. is
Professor (Emeritus) of Psychology at
University of California, San Francisco. Ekman is a world-renowned expert in
emotional research and nonverbal communication, particularly for his studies
on emotional expression and the corresponding physiological activity of the
face. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental
Health for 46 years.
Contrary to the belief of some
anthropologists, as
Margaret Mead, Ekman found that most facial
expressions and their corresponding emotions are not culturally determined,
but are presumably biological in origin, as Charles Darwin had once
theorized. Ekman's finding is now widely accepted by scientists. Expressions
he found to be universal included anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and
surprise.
Ekman also reported facial "microexpressions"
that he claimed could be used to reliably detect lying, in an effort called
the Diogenes Project. He also developed the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)
to taxonomize every conceivable human facial expression.
His latest book is Emotions Revealed (Times
Books, April, 2003).
www.paulekman.com
Read the
exclusive interview to Paul Ekman
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