Emotions Revealed

This book was written by Paul Ekman, and is the second edition. Ekman tells of his experiments and findings on micro and macro expressions and emotions. He explains when we become emotional and how to change how emotional we get. He tells of the seven main emotions we show; sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust and contempt. How emotions relate to lies and how to live with emotions.

ConnWe use micro and macro-expressions every day. Our faces show our emotions with our expressions. We have many different facial expressions, one expression a person might use on a daily basis is a smile, and you can tell a real smile from a fake smile by the crow’s feet in the corner of the eyes. The eyes squint and form wrinkle like indentions that look like a bird feet. Ekman used experiments to determine the facts about our expressions. In his first experiment he ”showed photographs to people in five cultures- Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, and the United States- and asked them to judge what emotion was shown in each facial expression. The majority in every culture agreed, suggesting that expressions might really be universal” (Ekman pg. 3). This was one of his many experiments to find out what truly makes us show our feelings and emotions on our faces. In Ekman’s studies with other scientist and psychologists help he discovered micro and macro expressions. The facial reading techniques are used today by the Department of Safety and police forces around the world.


Ekman, Paul. Emotions Revealed, Second Edition: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to
Improve Communication and Emotional Life . New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007. Print.