Paul Eckman

Paul Ekman is a well-known American psychologist, professor, and prolific writer that dedicated most of his life’s work to the study of emotions and their association with non-verbal emotional cues. Ekman is known for his studies on facial expressions and, more specifically, for contributing to the discovery of microexpressions and further investigating how these subtle cues convey essential information about emotions. The psychologist is also responsible for studying the manifestation of emotions across different populations, which would lead to another important finding: the universality of emotions.

According to Ekman, there are 6 basic emotions, namely anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and enjoyment, that are related to specific universal facial expressions. Later, Ekman would develop a new method of objectively measuring facial movements called Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The author also greatly contributed to the study of deception and published various books and papers addressing the social aspects of lying, reasons for lying, and nonverbal cues of deception. His findings granted him attention from the cinematographic industry but also from law enforcement structures and important figures like Dalai Lama. More precisely, he served as a scientific advisor on the Tv Show “Lie to Me” (in itself inspired by Ekman’s work on deception), developed training programs for the FBI and CIA, and engaged in deep discussion on the topic of compassion with Tibete’s spiritual leader.

Paul Ekman was ranked fifteenth among the most influential psychologists of 21st century and featured in the Time Magazines’ Top 100 Most Influential People in the year of 2009.