Paul Ekman's Research Summary

This study is based on the premise that facial expressions are universal to all cultures. Paul Ekman, is the leading researcher in this field, and this article is based on his early work, designed to demonstrate the universal facial expressions that are used around the world. Originally, it was thought that facial expressions were based on culture but in earlier research some psychologists disagree with how the testing was conducted and the results, and stated that facial expressions were had a consistent meaning across all cultures. In the article, it stated that several years prior to the study conducted by Ekman, he conducted another study with another researcher named Wallace Friesen, where they showed photographs of all college educated people from five countries,

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Japan, and the United States, in which all five countries correctly identified each facial expression regardless of nationality or race. Ekman and Friesen, stated when this study was completed that it was open to criticism, because every single person involved in the study were all exposed to international mass media, which has the ability to tamper with the experiment.

This study I feel was worthy to be placed in the book “Forty Studies that Changed Psychology” because facial expressions are big way, in how us as humans communicate between each other weather we realize it or not. In every thing we do we express ourselves through facial expressions, and it is important to psychology because it helps us and allows us to find a baseline between cultures so that we have a common form of communication between completely different cultures.

The theory behind Ekman’s research was to show that specific facial expressions that are in correlation to specific human emotion that are universal around the world. He believed that we are able to communicate with every culture around the world by just using facial expressions because although there are different languages throughout the world with different beliefs, we are still able to communicate through facial expressions.

The researcher went about testing his theory by obtaining a testing group who had no connection to western influences, 189 adults and 130 children were chosen to participate in this study out of 11,000 people in the certain area in which the test subjects were obtained.

The researchers went about the testing process by showing each individual 3 pictures of different facial expressions and have them explain what it is that the person was feeling in the photograph. They compared these results to a control group of 23 adults who have been exposed to western civilization, and who were familiar with other cultures.

What Ekman’s research consisted of was true to his theory. Ekman is still very involved in his research in this specific area of psychology but other information that he found to support his theory is called the facial feedback theory of emotional expressions. This theory says that the expression that your face produces actually sends signals of information back to your brain to help you to clarify the emotions you are feeling at the given time. Ekman tested his theory by identifying which facial muscles are involved with each specific emotion, happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust, and

surprise.

What I have learned throughout this study is body language and facial expressions say just as much as words do, and that your facial expressions and body movements have a tenancy to be more honest than your words due to the face that your brain knows when you are lying, or happy, it tried to express the given emotion in the correct fashion.