Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
byPaul Ekman
An excellent companion to Emotional Intelligence. We each experience the same emotion, in the abstract term that the word represents. However, our perceptions, feelings of intensity or duration of these emotions change from person to person. In Emotions Revealed, Paul Ekman attempts to uncover the commonalities or universal emotional traits, using decades of research and from studying the emotional reactions, triggers, and micro-expressions displayed from peoples of indigenous tribes who have had little to no contact with the outside world, which would contribute to learned behavior.
Although the book had a very academic tone, it was very well organized and easy to follow, aided with many pictures of facial expressions of various emotions. Ekman guides you into learning how to identify the subtle emotional cues that show up on our face, where we want them to or not.
The goal of the book is to help you build awareness in detecting when emotions arise. You learn to recognize and understand the emotions felt and may display, as well as recognizing the emotions in other, helping you to understand better and communicate with other people.
With great power comes great responsibility and ability to fool yourself; be careful not to jump to conclusions at the cause of emotions you think you may have observed.
Motivations to Read
I've had this book on my shelf for a while. Growing up, I was a loner and didn't develop strong interpersonal skills until I acknowledged it was a problem and I started to listen to others more and become better aware of my own emotions. Ever since, I've been working on my emotions like any other skill though deliberate practice and finding the right resources. I heard about the author Paul Ekman through the show Lie to Me and was thrilled to see he had done so much research and wrote a book about what he learned.
3 Reasons to Read
- Become more consciously aware of when you are becoming emotional, even before you speak or act.
- Be better at choosing how you behave when you are emotional, so you can achieve your goals without damaging other people
- Become more sensitive to how others are feelings and improve your emotional intelligence
Notable Quotes
“Emotions change how we see the world and how we interpret the actions of others. We do not seek to challenge why we are feeling a particular emotion; instead, we seek to confirm it.” Paul Ekman
“Emotions can override…the more powerful fundamental motives that drive our lives: hunger, sex, and the will to survive. People will not eat if they think the only food available is disgusting. They may even die, although other people might consider that same food palatable. Emotion triumphs over the hunger drive! A person may never attempt sexual contact because of the interference of fear or disgust, or may never be able to complete a sexual act. Emotion triumphs over the sex drive! And despair can overwhelm even the will to live, motivating a suicide. Emotions triumph over the will to live!” Paul Ekman
Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life Notes & Summary
