Some people say a face is like an open book. For psychologist Paul Ekman, the face is more than that, it’s the Rosetta stone of human evolution. Ekman has spent his life studying the language of facial expressions, identifying, mapping, and interpreting the emotions they reveal.
He got his start in the 1960s, when he traveled to New Guinea and found villagers there who had never seen a white person, but who knew a smile when they saw one, and could tell a frown from a grimace, a glower from a glare. His time in the bush convinced him that, contrary to conventional wisdom, emotions are not determined by culture, but instead are the universal product of human evolution, hardwired and honed over hundreds of thousands of years.
Guests:
Paul Ekman, professor of psychology at the University of California Medical School and author of “Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life.”