4 posts tagged “paul ekman”

Apparently when we are happy the facial muscles on our right side are more active than those on the left side. Those change more often when unhappy.

So next time you are talking with someone important to you and you try to figure out how that person is feeling you might get so absorbed in figuring it out that the poor dear you are staring intently at may wonder if he has a piece of egg on his face.

When dogs are happy, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.

Its all about the “emotional asymmetry in the brain,” according Richard J. Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin - where he has pursued research on meditation, through his longtime friendship with the Dalai Lama.

Read the rest of the story in Sandra Blakeslee’s article in the Science section of The New York Times.

Discover more tantalizing tidbits about reading faces by reading Paul Ekman’s groundbreaking book, Emotions Revealed and Telling Lies.

Read the complete story here.

Read the book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by foremost researcher, Martin Seligman.

It is the best book for learning how to become more resilient and successful in work and in relationships.

What makes some people more capable than others in maintaining close relationships and improving their performance? More than your IQ, hard work, or attractiveness, your level of optimism determines your success and happiness. That's what former American Psychology Association president Dr. Martin Seligman discovered.

To rebound from difficulties and capture more opportunities, learn from the most experienced researcher on the topic exactly how to be a clear-eyed optimist. After 15 years of studying helplessness and hopelessness, this pioneer in Positive Psychology turned his attention to studying optimism. Our physical and emotional health and capacity to maintain strong relationships and to get ahead in work are directly related to our level of optimism, Seligman found. He made another extraordinary discovery: you can actually learn to become more optimistic.

Unlike many shallow "think positive" books, this one is backed by sound research. As opposed to those who advocate boosting self-esteem regardless of one's abilities, Seligman teaches people to be positively proactive in light of their actual situations.

Seligman found that depressives have pessimistic thought patterns that are destructive. They focus on how things will get worse, believing that a bad situation is Permanent (will always be this bad), Pervasive (because this bad happened, I see the bad side of everything in my life), and Personal (most of all it happened worst to me). They often prove themselves right. If you want to step out of that downward spiral of destructive behavior, read and practice Seligman's methods.

I have given this book to 43 very smart, successful men who created their own walls of depression in the midst of their achievement. They liked the concrete, research-based program to make real change.  Their wives and co-workers liked the changes too.

Take the questionnaire in this book to learn where you are on the pessimist-to-optimist scale. Read how your level of optimism is affecting your life. Then follow the suggested steps to lift your level of optimism and maintain it at that higher level.

Organizations as diverse as a major insurance company and the UC-Berkeley swim team have used Seligman's methods to dramatically improve morale and performance. I have read this book four times and given away over 50 copies.

This book is especially important for girls entering their teen years where their higher-than-average optimism tends to fall. If you've experienced recent failures, want to hire the best job candidate, or hope to support those you manage in becoming more successful, read this book. Every home, school, and counseling or H.R. office should have a copy of this book.

To brighten your life further, practice ways to bring out others' more optimistic side so you can become happier and higher performing together. Read how in LikeABILITY, which you can download immediately.

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
a book by Paul Ekman

"What is he really feeling?," you ponder as you search his face. If you knew, you might get along better. For recognizing true emotions -- yours and others' -- read this book. From the preeminent expert on reading faces and on deception comes his most complete book yet.

I have a friend who looks judgmental when he's in contemplation and a client who appears angry when she's tired. With this book you can become more adept at reading others' emotional signals. Also learn to alter your own feelings through recognizing them sooner. Book includes photos and exercises, such as how to recognize a genuine smile. Ekman's clients range from the FBI to Pixar animation studios.

"There hasn't been a book on this subject of such range and insight since Darwin's famous Expression of the Emotions" is how Oliver Sacks describes this book that culls from 40 years of research.

Everyone from lawyers to teachers and salesfolks can use Ekman's insights to better understand human behavior.

As you learn to recognize emotions -- yours and others -- you can also learn to sidestep conflict and bring out the best in others by reading LikeAbility. You can download it right now.

Don't stop there. Enjoy becoming more clear, compelling and quotable by listening to 100 communication and persuasion tips in Make Yourself Memorable.

We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced.  To learn more about how you present yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to look yourself in the face.  What to get out a mirror now, before you read further?   Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?

You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face.  Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain helps to explain why this is so.  The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of how you feel.

In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body -- -the left and the right -- are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion.  Look at yourself in the mirror  -- full-face and full length -- to see the differences.

In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.

Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.

The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the more “public” side of your face.  The left often looks less happy than the right.  Most subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and attitude towards the world.

Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or open in expression.  The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to keep private from the world -- and sometimes even from yourself.

The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your personality.  

“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”
 - Live Ullman, actress, author

Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body -- including the face -- then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world and how we can better understand others.   The left brain -- reflected more in the right side of the face -- relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and language.

The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other more creative leanings.  

The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life emanate from your right brain.  You express them more in the left side of your face.

We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.

The more controlled or conscious responses -- the social mask you put on for the world -- may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more readily on the right side of the face.

Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.

How Do You See the World?
Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world -- which it does predominantly through your left eye.  And, when you face someone, your left eye is across from the other person’s right side.  Therefore, you are more aware of their right side.  

But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face  which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side.  You miss facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.

“Public / Private Face” Exercise
Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone -- and it doesn’t involve disrobing or even touching.  Sit facing each other.  

Now look at the left and the right sides of the other person’s face.  Does the right side show a more open, less tense presence?  Does the left look more reserved, serious?  

The left side, that is their left side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public face.  In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition.  As you face each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.

“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most memorable part of the face.”
 - Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist

“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise
Now try this experiment.  Get out your driver’s license.   Look at both sides of your face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper.  Look “inward” at yourself and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.  

You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of your face and your personality development overtime -- and that of others in your family.  Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other perspectives on them.

“Photo Finish” Exercise
To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of “head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself.  If you don’t have any handy, ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and compare notes on this exercise.  

Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face.  Flop over one side of each negative.  Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo.  

Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print made.  Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half negatives become right-right and left-left faces.  

You will then see exaggerated versions of both aspects of yourself -- and will probably be able to see each more clearly.