Last October there was a story in the Washington Post that quoted Paul Ekman on, “How to Catch a Terrorist on the Fly.” You may have tamer reasons for wanting to understand body language.
Ekman is the foremost expert on detecting emotions. I met him years ago and was transfixed by the level of sophistication and success he’s had from the in-depth study of how the facial muscles reveal whether an expression is genuine or feigned. He began by studying his own face for well over a year.
He’s worked with groups as diverse as intelligence agencies, airport security and marriage counselors. Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman took him, along with other scientists to meet with the Dalai Lama to explore how the insights from Buddhists’ practice might help non-practitioners be less reactionary. Goleman wrote a book about the experience, Destructive Emotions.
In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell cited Ekman’s research, as used by marriage counselor John Gottman.
You can read a manual or use an interactive CD to benefit from Ekman’s research and learn to more accurately sense someone’s emotions by “reading” their facial expressions. Ekman gave his methodology the unwieldy title, Facial Action Coding System or FACS.
If this all seems rather strenuous, you might read his books, Emotions Revealed or Telling Lies.
Also check out Siri Schubert’s article in Scientific American article, A Look Tells All and, in Time Magazine, Jeffrey Kluger and Coco Master’s article, How to Spot a Liar.
