Chapter 1
The Universal Language We All Speak
Imagine walking into a room and immediately sensing someone's anger before they've said a word. Or picture yourself in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, yet you can still recognize when someone is delighted or distressed. This remarkable ability isn't magic-it's the universal language of emotions that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers. Paul Ekman, the world's foremost expert on facial expressions and emotions, has spent over forty years decoding this language through groundbreaking research spanning continents and cultures. His work has transformed our understanding of human emotion, influenced everything from FBI interrogation techniques to Pixar animation, and earned him recognition as one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. In "Emotions Revealed," Ekman invites us into the fascinating world of emotional intelligence, offering insights that can transform our relationships and deepen our self-awareness in ways few other books can match.
Chapter 2
The Universal Blueprint of Emotional Expression
When we think about what makes us uniquely human, language often comes to mind. Yet there exists an even more fundamental communication system that predates spoken language-our emotions and their expressions. Through decades of meticulous research across diverse cultures, Ekman discovered something remarkable: regardless of whether you're in New York or New Guinea, Tokyo or Timbuktu, the basic facial expressions for emotions like anger, fear, disgust, surprise, sadness, and happiness remain strikingly similar.
This universality suggests our emotional expressions are wired into our biology rather than learned through culture-a theory first proposed by Charles Darwin. In one of Ekman's most famous studies, he traveled to remote parts of Papua New Guinea to work with people who had never seen television or magazines and had minimal contact with outsiders. When shown photographs of various emotional expressions, these individuals identified the same emotions that Americans would, confirming the cross-cultural consistency of emotional displays.
However, culture does play a crucial role in how we regulate these expressions. Ekman coined the term "display rules" to describe culturally determined norms about when and how emotions should be shown publicly. In Japan, for example, people often mask negative emotions in public settings, while Americans might be more expressive. These display rules explain why, despite having the same biological capacity for emotional expression, different cultures appear to have different emotional styles.
The evolutionary purpose of these universal expressions becomes clear when we consider their function: they signal our internal states to others without requiring language. A fearful expression warns others of danger; a disgusted face cautions against contamination; a smile invites social connection. This signaling system evolved because it enhanced our ancestors' survival and social cohesion, allowing for rapid communication of critical information.
By understanding this universal language, we gain a powerful tool for improving our relationships. When we can accurately read others' emotional signals, we become more empathetic and responsive to their needs. Similarly, awareness of our own emotional expressions helps us communicate more effectively and authentically. This emotional literacy forms the foundation for the deeper insights Ekman offers throughout his work.
Chapter 3
The Lightning-Fast Trigger: How Emotions Begin
Have you ever found yourself furious before you even realized what happened? Or felt your heart racing with fear before consciously recognizing a threat? This isn't a glitch in your emotional system-it's a feature designed to protect you. Emotions can begin remarkably quickly, often before our conscious mind even registers what triggered them.
Ekman explains that emotions typically begin through automatic appraisal-an unconscious evaluation mechanism that scans our environment for things relevant to our welfare. This system operates with extraordinary speed, sometimes triggering emotional responses in as little as one-twentieth of a second. When you narrowly avoid a car accident, your body reacts with fear before you've had time to think "I'm in danger." This speed can be life-saving in emergencies but problematic when we overreact to situations that don't warrant such intense responses.
Our emotional triggers include both universal themes that affect virtually everyone and personal triggers unique to our individual experiences. Universal triggers might include physical threats or signs of disgust, while personal triggers develop through our unique life experiences-perhaps criticism from a parent or rejection by peers. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward gaining more control over our emotional lives.
Beyond automatic appraisal, Ekman identifies seven other pathways that can trigger emotions. Reflective appraising occurs when we consciously consider ambiguous situations until something "clicks" and triggers an emotion. Though slower than automatic appraisal, it gives us more opportunity to influence our emotional responses. Other pathways include remembering past emotional scenes (which often reactivate the original emotions), imagination, talking about emotional experiences, empathizing with others' emotions, and being instructed by others about appropriate emotional responses.
What makes changing our emotional triggers so challenging is that once established, they become remarkably resistant to modification. When we're in the grip of an emotion, we enter what Ekman calls a "refractory state"-a period during which we selectively process information that confirms our feelings while ignoring contradictory evidence. This state briefly focuses our attention on immediate problems but becomes problematic when prolonged.
Consider how difficult it is to reason with someone in the heat of anger-they seem unable to consider alternative perspectives. This isn't stubbornness; it's their emotional brain temporarily overriding their rational faculties. Understanding this mechanism helps explain why emotional reactions can feel so compelling and why changing them requires patience and persistence.
Chapter 4
The Emotional Orchestra: From Signals to Sensations
Unlike thoughts, which remain private until expressed, emotions broadcast signals that reveal our feelings to others. Most emotions have distinctive facial expressions, vocal tones, and physical manifestations that others can detect. This signaling system is always "on"-we can attempt to dampen these signals, but rarely perfectly.
Ekman's research has established seven universal facial expressions: sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, contempt, and happiness-each representing a family of related emotions that vary in intensity and type. These expressions emerge almost instantly when emotions begin, with voices automatically changing and facial muscles shifting in predictable patterns.
The face and voice serve as our primary emotional broadcasting systems, but they function differently. While the face is always observable unless deliberately hidden, the voice is intermittent and can be voluntarily silenced. This explains why people often prefer telephone conversations or emails for difficult discussions-they offer protection from revealing facial expressions. However, once someone begins speaking, emotional signs become difficult to conceal in the voice. Few can convincingly simulate unfelt emotions vocally without an actor's training.
Beyond these signals, emotions create universal impulses toward physical actions. In anger, we're drawn toward the trigger; fear prompts freezing or fleeing; disgust creates an impulse to turn away or expel the offensive object; sadness causes a loss of muscle tone and withdrawal. These action impulses, while not technically signals evolved specifically for communication, still reveal our emotional states to others.
Internally, emotions trigger physiological changes that sometimes produce visible signs. Research by Levenson and Ekman found distinct autonomic nervous system patterns for different emotions. Anger and fear increase heart rate to prepare for movement, but anger directs blood to the hands (warming them for striking), while fear sends blood to the legs (preparing for flight). Perspiration increases with intense fear and anger, while respiration changes distinctly across emotions.
When emotions grip us, a cascade of involuntary changes occurs in split seconds: facial and vocal signals, preset and learned actions, autonomic nervous system activity, regulatory patterns, memory retrieval, and interpretive frameworks. Ekman calls these "affect programs"-inherited central mechanisms directing emotional behavior, with different programs for each emotion. These aren't literal computer programs but metaphorical systems distributed across brain regions that coordinate our emotional responses.
Understanding this emotional orchestra helps explain why emotions feel so powerful and all-encompassing. When an emotion activates, it's not just a feeling but a comprehensive mind-body experience that prepares us to respond to the situation at hand.
Chapter 5
Sadness and Agony: The Language of Loss
Sadness can be triggered by many types of loss: rejection by friends or lovers, failure at work leading to diminished self-esteem, loss of admiration from superiors, health deterioration, loss of body function through accident or illness, and even loss of treasured objects. The emotional vocabulary for these feelings includes being distraught, disappointed, dejected, blue, depressed, discouraged, despairing, grieved, helpless, miserable, and sorrowful.
Ekman distinguishes between sadness and agony-two related but distinct emotional responses to loss. Agony involves active protest against the loss, while sadness reflects resignation and hopelessness. Think of the difference between someone crying out in anguish immediately after receiving devastating news versus the quiet tears that might come days later. Agony often seems purposeless when the loss is irrecoverable, yet it persists as part of our emotional response pattern.
Sadness typically lasts longer than other emotions. After an initial period of protesting agony, people usually enter a phase of resigned sadness. This pattern repeats in waves, with intense emotions coming and going rather than sustaining continuously. A background sad mood may persist until the mourning process ends.
Even in intense grief, other emotions emerge periodically. A grieving person may feel anger at life, God, the cause of loss, or the deceased. Self-directed anger and guilt commonly arise from feeling powerless to prevent the loss. We feel anger toward those responsible for a loss, while sadness and agony relate to the loss itself. Positive emotions may briefly surface during grief, such as amusement when recalling shared funny moments with the deceased.
The social context profoundly affects how grief is expressed. Ekman describes witnessing a New Guinean woman whose baby died remain unexpressive during their journey but erupt in intense agony upon seeing her relatives. The doctor misinterpreted this as insincere ritual display, failing to recognize that grief often intensifies in the presence of those who share our loss. The meaning of loss becomes enriched when we communicate it to others who understand its significance.
Sadness displays across the face with several reliable signs. The most telling is the upward angling of inner eyebrow corners-a movement few can fabricate voluntarily, making it a reliable indicator even when people attempt to hide their feelings. This often creates vertical wrinkles between the brows. In intense sadness, the lips stretch horizontally, the lower lip pushes up (sometimes trembling), and the mouth opens wide.
Modern approaches to grief raise important questions about medication use to alleviate suffering. While appropriate for clinical depression, medicating normal grief may interfere with healing. Sadness and agony serve important functions: they signal others to provide healing social support, they deepen our experience of what the loss means, and they allow us to conserve energy and rebuild resources. Without firm evidence either way, Ekman raises these considerations regarding medicating normal grief reactions.
Chapter 6
Anger: The Face of Attack
The face of attack and violence is anger. While various emotion theorists propose different triggers for anger, there may be multiple themes rather than a single central one. Physical interference-restricting movement-effectively triggers anger in infants, representing a common cause in all ages: deliberate interference with our intentions.
Anger encompasses various related experiences ranging from slight annoyance to rage, including indignation (self-righteous anger), sulking (passive anger), exasperation, resentment, and hatred. When resentment persists as a grudge, it becomes a long-standing emotional state that reactivates whenever the offending person is encountered. Hatred-an enduring, intense dislike often mixed with disgust and contempt-similarly persists but is more general in character than resentment's specific grievances.
Anger is our most dangerous emotion because it drives us to harm others-sometimes with words, sometimes with violence. The impulse to hurt appears to be built into our anger response system, evident in infants who show "slashing and thrashing" behaviors when frustrated. While these impulses diminish with age as children learn control, the capacity for violence remains throughout life, though individuals differ in the intensity of their violent impulses.
We often regret angry words or actions, claiming "I lost my head"-suggesting our true attitudes were distorted by emotion. Most people can prevent acting on anger if attentive to their emotional state, though this struggle is harder for those with quick-onset, intense anger responses. Being aware of our anger allows us to regulate reactions, reevaluate situations, and plan more effective responses.
The anger expression includes lowered, drawn-together brows and glaring eyes. Lips may either be tightly pressed together or open in a square or rectangular shape. Cultural differences exist-Papua New Guineans press lips tightly when about to strike but part them when controlling anger, while middle-class Americans show the opposite pattern. One subtle but reliable sign of anger is the thinning of the lips as the red margin narrows-often an early indicator before the person realizes they're angry.
Despite its dangers, anger serves important functions: motivating us to change unjust situations, signaling displeasure to others, and sometimes providing energy to deal with threats. Some people even enjoy anger, finding arguments exciting and satisfying, while others find anger toxic and avoid it entirely.
Research shows hostility-a personality trait centered on anger-correlates with heart problems. Studies found that Type A personalities displayed more partial anger expressions ("glares") than Type B personalities. In patients with coronary artery disease, those who showed anger expressions when discussing past frustrations were more likely to experience ischemic episodes, suggesting they were reliving their anger, which accelerated heart rate and increased blood pressure-dangerous for those with heart disease.
Chapter 7
Fear and Surprise: The Alerting Emotions
The threat of harm, physical or psychological, characterizes all fear triggers. While some triggers appear universal-objects hurling toward us, sudden loss of support causing falls, and threats of physical pain-individual differences exist. Research suggests we may be biologically prepared to fear reptilian shapes more than modern dangers like guns, but not everyone fears snakes or heights.
Fear manifests differently depending on whether threats are immediate or impending. Immediate threats focus attention on coping actions, sometimes without unpleasant sensations if we're actively responding. Impending threats produce worry, increased vigilance and pain sensitivity. Panic attacks represent extreme fear episodes with physical symptoms and total preoccupation with the dreaded event.
Surprise is the briefest emotion, lasting only seconds before transforming into fear, amusement, relief, anger, disgust, or nothing at all, depending on what surprised us. It's rarely captured in photographs because of its unexpected nature and brevity. Surprise can only be triggered by sudden, unexpected events. When something unfolds slowly, even if unexpected, it doesn't generate surprise.
While surprise is an emotion, startle is not, though many use these terms interchangeably. They look completely different-in startle, eyes close tightly (versus wide open in surprise), brows lower (versus raised), and lips stretch tensely (versus jaw dropping). Unlike emotional expressions where extreme versions resemble moderate ones, startle is the opposite of surprise.
Fear expressions are distinctive and recognizable across various intensities. The key features include raised upper eyelids (often with tensed lower eyelids), eyebrows raised and drawn together, and lips stretched horizontally toward the ears with the chin pulled back. These elements can appear in combination or isolation, with varying intensities signaling different degrees of fear from slight worry to outright terror.
Fear can combine with other emotions, as demonstrated in photographs of people experiencing complex emotional situations. For instance, someone might show both fear and anger simultaneously-anger in the upper face (eyebrows pulled down and together against raised eyelids) and fear in the lower face (horizontally stretched lips with chin pulled backward).
Some people actually enjoy feeling fearful, as evidenced by the popularity of scary movies. Research shows that viewers displaying fearful expressions while watching frightening scenes also exhibit the physiological responses of fear-increased heart rate and blood flowing to leg muscles. Others seek real danger through risky sports, though it's unclear if they enjoy the fear itself, the associated excitement, or the post-danger relief and pride.
Chapter 8
Disgust and Contempt: The Rejecting Emotions
Disgust involves aversion-rejecting something offensive through taste, smell, sight, sound or touch. While initially centered on food and bodily products, disgust extends to people's actions, appearances, and even ideas. The emotion doesn't appear as a separate response until between ages four and eight, though distaste exists earlier.
Researcher Paul Rozin identifies "core disgust" involving oral incorporation of offensive substances, with bodily products (feces, vomit, urine, mucus, blood) being universal triggers. Beyond this are forms of "interpersonal disgust" triggered by the strange, diseased, misfortunate, and morally tainted. While specific triggers vary across cultures, the disgust mechanism itself appears universal.
Disgust serves crucial social functions. "Fed-up disgust" in marriages predicts future separation-when a wife expresses disgust toward a husband's emotional withdrawal, it signals a fundamental rejection. Paradoxically, the suspension of disgust marks intimacy. Parents overcome disgust to care for children's bodily functions; lovers permit physical intimacies that would be repulsive with others.
Disgust also functions to remove us from what's revolting-physically and socially. However, it can be dangerous when it dehumanizes people we find disgusting, allowing mistreatment. Legal scholar Martha Nussbaum argues that laws shouldn't be based on disgust but on outrage, which maintains the offender within our moral community rather than treating them as subhuman.
Contempt differs from disgust in crucial ways. While disgust can be triggered by tastes, smells, or touches, contempt is exclusively directed at people or their actions. In contempt, we feel morally superior to others, looking down on them with disdain, though we don't necessarily need to escape their presence as with disgust.
Gottman's research reveals contempt's destructive power in marriages. Wives whose husbands showed contempt felt "flooded," believed their problems were severe and unsolvable, and became physically ill more frequently over the following four years. Notably, husbands' expressions of disgust or anger didn't produce these effects, highlighting contempt's unique harmfulness.
Unlike disgust, which feels unpleasant, contempt often feels pleasurable to experience, though we may later feel embarrassed about it. Its function seems primarily to signal superiority and assert power or status. Those uncertain of their status may be more likely to express contempt to assert dominance.
Disgust manifests in two primary facial signals, often appearing together: nose wrinkling and raised upper lip. In intense disgust, the eyebrows pull down (sometimes mistaken for anger), cheeks raise pushing up the lower eyelids, while the eyelid muscles remain relaxed.
Contempt's signature expression is a tightened, slightly raised lip corner on one side of the face. This asymmetrical expression distinguishes it from disgust. Emotional blends can occur-disgust might mix with anger or contempt might blend with enjoyment (combining the tightened lip corner with a partial smile, creating a smug look).
Chapter 9
The Spectrum of Joy: Understanding Enjoyable Emotions
While research has focused primarily on negative emotions, there exist more than a dozen distinct enjoyable emotions, each as different from one another as sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and contempt. Terms like "enjoyment" and "happiness" are too general, like calling someone "upset" without specifying whether they're sad, angry, or afraid.
Ekman identifies several distinct types of enjoyable emotions. Sensory pleasures include tactile (things that feel good to touch), visual (beautiful sights), auditory (pleasing sounds like ocean waves or music), taste (particularly sweetness), and smell. While some argue these aren't true emotions because they're restricted to single sensory sources, Ekman disagrees, noting that sensory pleasures can involve complex appraisal processes.
Amusement is one of the simplest enjoyable emotions-the pleasure we feel when finding something funny. It ranges from slight to extremely intense, sometimes producing peals of laughter and tears. Much of the entertainment industry exists to provide this emotion on demand.
Contentment arises when everything seems right and we feel no pressing needs-the "laid-back" feeling. Unlike other emotions, contentment may not have distinct facial signals but might be detected through relaxed facial muscles or vocal cues.
Excitement responds to novelty or challenge, often building from mere interest into a full emotional experience when changes happen quickly or unexpectedly. It has its own unique flavor but frequently merges with other enjoyable emotions or even with fear (without actual danger).
Wonder is characterized by its rarity and the feeling of being overwhelmed by something incomprehensible yet not frightening. It creates physical sensations like goosebumps and tingles on the shoulders and neck, deep breathing, and head-shaking in incredulity. Unlike admiration, which motivates us to follow inspiring people, wonder causes us to stand still, transfixed.
Ekman also identifies culturally specific enjoyable emotions that lack English terms. Fiero (Italian) describes the unique emotion felt when successfully meeting a difficult challenge. Unlike simple satisfaction or pride, fiero follows personal stretching to accomplish something difficult. Naches (Yiddish) is the specific emotion parents feel when their children accomplish something important-"the glow of pleasure-plus-pride that only a child can give its parents."
While all enjoyable emotions involve smiling, recent research confirms that vocal signals, not facial expressions, distinguish between different enjoyable emotions. The Duchenne smile, discovered by French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne, differentiates genuine enjoyment from non-enjoyment smiles. In true enjoyment, both the zygomatic major muscle (pulling lip corners up) and the orbicularis oculi muscle (around the eyes) activate. Most people cannot voluntarily contract the outer part of the orbicularis oculi, making it a reliable indicator of genuine enjoyment.
Research shows Duchenne smiles appear when infants see their mothers (not strangers), when happily married couples meet, and correlate with reduced grief and greater well-being. Brain scans confirm that Duchenne smiles activate areas associated with spontaneous enjoyment.
Chapter 10
Living with Emotion: Toward Greater Awareness
We all experience the same emotions, but in uniquely individual ways. People vary in their emotional profiles across multiple dimensions: speed of onset, intensity, duration, recovery time, frequency, controllability, and expressiveness. These differences aren't necessarily consistent across emotions-someone might experience anger differently than fear or sadness.
To manage our emotions effectively, Ekman recommends what he calls "attentively considering our emotional feelings"-a heightened awareness that allows us to observe ourselves during emotional episodes, ideally within seconds of onset. This mindful stance enables us to reevaluate our responses and direct our actions while still experiencing the emotion.
Developing this attentiveness requires practice but becomes habitual over time. We can cultivate it by learning about our emotional triggers, becoming more aware of our bodily sensations during emotions, and observing others' emotional expressions. When attentive, we can either reappraise the situation (though difficult during the refractory period) or control our actions even if we can't change our feelings.
Ekman emphasizes that emotions themselves aren't problematic-they're essential signals that help us navigate life's challenges. The issue arises when emotions lead to actions we later regret or when we become stuck in emotional patterns that no longer serve us. By developing greater emotional awareness, we can harness the wisdom of our emotions while avoiding their potential pitfalls.
Understanding individual emotional profiles helps deepen our understanding of ourselves and others. Even though emotions like embarrassment, guilt, shame, and envy lack clear signals, they still qualify as emotions and influence our behavior in significant ways.
The practical applications of emotional intelligence extend to every relationship in our lives. When we can accurately read others' emotional signals and manage our own emotional responses, we become more effective communicators, more empathetic friends and family members, and more insightful leaders. This emotional literacy isn't just a nice-to-have skill-it's fundamental to human connection and wellbeing.
When Ekman began researching emotions decades ago, only a handful of researchers worldwide studied them; now thousands do, with new findings continually emerging to enhance our understanding of emotional life. His pioneering work has transformed how we think about emotions, moving them from the periphery of psychological science to its center, and demonstrating their crucial importance in everything from mental health to international diplomacy.
