Biography
Paul Ekman is an American scientist-psychologist, doctor of science, a former teacher of the University of California, who devoted life to the study of human emotions and phenomenon a lie. A talented writer, looking for an answer to the question why people lie and how to recognize a deceiver, created a methodology for learning "Wizards of Truth", which is widely used in criminology and other areas of public life.Childhood and youth
Paul Ecman was born on February 15, 1934 in Washington, District Columbia. His father was a therapist, but a lawyer's mother. Joyce's sister practiced psychology and before retirement worked in New York.
As a child, Ecman was an unusually capable child. Without graduating from high school, at the age of 15 he entered the University of Chicago, where for 3 years he received a bachelor's degree in psychology. At that time, Paul was fascinated by group therapy sessions, conducted among students, including the writer Susan Sontag, director Mike Nichols and Actress Elene May.
This practice has become the theme of the first study of the young Ekman, which he spent at the University of New York under the guidance of Professor Margaret Tent.
In 1955, Paul graduated from adelphi university graduate school and defended his doctoral dissertation on clinical psychology. His work was founded on observations of patients of the psychoneurological institute Langley Porter and is devoted to the study of facial expressions and televitations.
In 1958, Ekman called on the army to the position of a military psychologist, where, in addition to the fulfillment of direct duties, he followed changes in the consciousness and behavior of the infantrymen during basic combat training.
Psychology
At the end of the military service, the floor has studied the features of speech behavior in hospital patients for Palo Alto veterans. In 1963, these studies helped a young scientist to receive a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which over the next 40 years financed Ekman projects on the diagnosis of non-verbal behavior.
Expanding the geographical circle of objects under study, in 1965 Paul sent interest in the cross-culture area. At first, he tracked the emotions and gestures of the inhabitants of Bali Island on the films filmed by Gregory Beitson's anthropologist, and then went to Papua New Guinea to watch the representatives of the wild tribes. The result of 3 years of work was the confirmation of the Darwinian theory of the universality of individuals and publication of labor under the name "System of encoding facial movements."
In 1967, Ecman, together with the colleague and army friend Wall, Frizen and the psychologist Maureen O'Sallevan became interested in the phenomenon of lies. The first discoveries in this area of scientists have made in the process of observing the persons of patients with suicidal inclinations trying to hide the motives of their own actions.
The research work floor combined with teaching at the University of California at the Department of Psychiatry. There he led the project called the "Wizard" and studied the ability of people to detect a lie. After testing 20 thousand people from different layers of society, including representatives of the FBI and secret special services, Ekman discovered that only 50 subjects were able to identify deception with an accuracy of at least 80%.
"Pravda wizards" had a natural ability to recognize microwaves and detect the inconsistency of emotions, body language and uttered words. At the end of the experiment, the floor continued to work with the winners of testing to answer the question: where the lies detection skill come from.
In addition, the psychologist's scientist created a simulator for beginners of "wizards", using which, each person could determine how competent it is in determining the deception. The "Lie Theory" became the business of Ekman's life and his associates. The scientist published many works devoted to this problem, and after leaving from the professorship, founded the company Paul Ekman Group (PEG).
Books and films
Since 1957, Ekman began to publish its own research in the field of psychiatry and behavioral analysis. In the first publication, he described the methods for measuring non-verbal communication, developed on internship in the Neuropsychiatric Institute Langley Porter. Paul found that facial muscle movements that create facial expressions could be accurately identified using empirical studies. In his opinion, people are able to reproduce more than 10 thousand facial expressions, 3 thousand of which relate to emotions.
In the "Face Movement Coding System", published in 1978 in collaboration with Wall Frize, the floor described "emotional labels" among the peoples of Western and Eastern cultures, among which were universal anger, humility, joy, sadness and some others. Based on this, the researchers have developed an anatomically substantiated system describing all the visible movements of the person in the manifestation of one or another emotion.
In 1990, the scientist supplemented the list of expressions encoded not only in the facial muscles, but also in the gestures and gestures. It includes contempt, satisfaction, embarrassment, excitement, wines, pride for achievements, relief, satisfaction, sensual pleasure and shame.
In addition, the floor with a colleague developed and described the tools that allow identifying more subtle states that arise if desired to suppress emotions. It helped psychiatras in the "reading" of patients with Asperger's syndrome and autism.
Two years earlier, Eneman created and published the famous test called "Pictures of the facial affect" (Pofa), consisting of 110 black and white images illustrated by 6 universal emotions and neutral expressions. Remainfully tested on people with different degrees of psychiatric health, it became widely used in medical practice around the world.
Mature works of Ekman are dedicated to the "lies theory", the scientist was looking for answers to the questions: why people tell a lie, how to identify the liar with the help of observations and who of people can do it. During this period, Paul wrote the book "Why Lgut Kids", "Psychology of Lie", "Find a liar to the expression of the face" and others.
In 2008, Ecman published a dialogue with the great sage Dalai Lama XIV, where the outstanding representatives of East and Western culture discusses the burning topics and are trying to find answers to many philosophical questions. "Psychology of Equilibrium" has enriched knowledge of readers about science and religion, emotional states, meditation practices to achieve emotional equilibrium and ways to achieve joy.
In the 2000s, Ekman's popularity led him to television. In 2001, Paul collaborated with British actor John with the documentary TV series BBC "Human face". The purpose of the project was to study the human person for family similarities, physical attractiveness and ability to express emotions without the help of words.
In 2009, the psychologist's scientist became the prototype of the main character of the series "Deception me", Dr. Cal Lightman, who led the "The Lightman Group", a team of masters to recognize lies. The show, partially based on the biography of Ekman, started on the Fox Channel in 2009 and existed for 3 seasons. Paul was the supervisor of the film crew and the Pima Rota Personal Consultant who performed the main role in this television project.
The series demonstrated the methods of identifying deception invented by Ekman to some extent, popularized its simulator, and also showed the limitless possibilities for the use of the "Lie theory" to establish justice and accomplish the justice.
In 2015, Paul helped the director Pete the Doctter in the work on the "Puzzle" cartoon film. The scientist wrote a guide for parents telling how to properly present an animation story so that the children could figure out their own emotions and manifestations of feelings of fictional characters.
Personal life
On the personal life of Paul Ekman knows a little, being a psychologist, he prefers to keep family relationships in secret.
In the introduction to the book "Why Children Lgut" author mentions the adoptive son of Tony, who in adolescent age deceived the floor and his wife Mary Ann Mason, organizing a noisy party in a country house without their knowledge. In the middle of the work there are also several chapters dedicated to the native author, in which examples of relationships based on their own experience are considered.
Ekman has a daughter, Eve, who became a doctor of science. At the official website, a psychologist spoke about their joint work on the publication of the "Atlas of Emotions" with the support of Dalai Lama, published in November 2018.
Paul Ekman now
Ekman is a practitioner psychologist working at Paul Ekman Group, which is engaged in training emotional skills, behavioral analysis and other aspects of non-verbal psychology.
Now the founder and leader "PEG" conducts training for employees under the EKMAN Associate program. In the spring and autumn of 2019, Ekman plans to conduct exit seminars in England, where for 3 days will be trained by the mastery of recognition of emotions and the analysis of verbal and non-verbal behavioral signals.
Bibliography
- "Why do children lie"
- "Psychology of Lie"
- "Find a liar for the expression of the face"
- "Emotion Psychology"
- "Wisdom of the East and West"
Filmography
- 2001 - "Human face"
- 2009-2011 - "Fool me"
- 2015 - "Puzzle"