Ekman
Ekman, Paul
Emotion
Emotion. The term 'emotion' originates from the Latin emovere, which carries the sense of movement and excitation. This captures the activating quality emotions can have upon people. Although the term is widely used within psychology, it is not easily defined. Nor it is easily studied using most of the conventional methodological tools of experimental psychology. Emotions involve the experience of various feelings, though the term 'emotion' is usually only employed in the case of a fairly intense feeling, carrying a strong personal significance, such as joy or sadness.\nThe powerful motivating force of emotions has been of particular interest to both psychoanalysts and humanistic psychologists, with the former tending to focus more on the unconscious aspects of emotion, both positive and negative, and the latter on the possibilities for conscious experience of 'positive' emotions. Arguably, much of human activity can be seen in terms of a search to experience positive emotional states, and escape from negative emotions. It is perhaps interesting therefore to reflect on how little most branches of academic psychology over the last century have actually studied this topic.
Physiological
Physiological measurement. This approach takes measurements of human physiology (the structures and functions of the nervous system), to show how our biology affects our behaviour and experience. It can involve measuring the levels of hormones such as adrenalin in the body in order to study their effects (since these effects have been found to be quite context-dependent). Another example might involve measuring of the electrical resistance of the skin, indicating the amount of sweat generated (more technically, Galvanic Skin Response, or GSR) and looking for changes when people are telling the truth or lying. Here a relatively simple physiological measurement is being used as an indicator of underlying mental states.\nAn issue that can arise from use of physiological methods is the question of reductionism, in this context the extent to which complex human behaviour and experience can be explained entirely in biological terms. This is sometimes jokingly referred to as 'nothing-buttery', as in: “the experience of aggression is 'nothing but' the flow of adrenalin and the firing of particular neurons”. The resolution of debates like this require philosophical methods as well as physiological ones.
Deception
Deception. Psychologists have studied how a person's non-verbal behaviour can betray the fact that they are engaged in deceiving the person they are talking to. The human capacity for deception has been taken up by evolutionary psychologists, as part of our recent evolutionary development relates to the human capacity for interpersonal communication and the ability to 'read' the views and intentions of other people. The capacity to deceive implies an ability to overcome this faculty.
Non-verbal behaviour
Non-verbal communication. This refers to those aspects of human communication apart from the overtly verbal content, including gestures, body posture, and facial expressions. It could either refer to communication which is entirely non-verbal, or to the non-verbal 'sub-text' to a verbal exchange. Non-verbal communication is a key part of the communication, sometimes more important than the actual words used and sometimes in conflict with them.
By the middle 1960s Ekman's work centred more specifically on the expression and physiology of emoti on, with his particular studies in New Guinea, and his conception of 'display rules' to account for cultural differences in the control of expression, becoming well known.
Written by Course Team. Additional sources: www.paulekman.com and Sheehy et al. Biographical Diction ary of Psychology.
On discharge from the army, Ekman returned to the University of California to begin a three-year pos tdoctoral research fellowship. When that ended he was supported by research grants, and in 1972 was appointed Professor of Psychology.
His 'Facial Action Coding System' is widely used to measure facial movement objectively. Ekman has received many honours, most notably the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association in 1991, and an honorary doctor of humane letters from the University of Chicago in 1994.
Paul Ekman was born in Washington, DC, USA in 1934. He is Professor of Psychology, in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco.
Ekman was an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago and New York University, where he la tterly received his BA in 1954. He obtained an MA from Aldelphi University in 1955, and his PhD in 1958, also from Adelphi University, after spending a year in clinical internship at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, part of the University of California, San Francisco. Ekman was drafted into the US Army in 1958 and was chief psychologist at Fort Dix New Jersey, 1958-1960.
Ekman's interests have focused on two separate but related topics. He originally took an interest in 'non-verbal' behaviour, at a time when it was largely neglected in mainstream psychology, and among his first achievements was the development of a taxonomy of non-verbal behaviours.
Ekman's second interest, dating from the same period of time, is interpersonal deception, and he was the first to publicise the term 'leakage' with reference to how non-verbal behaviour can betray deceit.
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