Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman. 

3/5 rating.

Book #92 of 2019. Read July 30, 2019.

This book discusses the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that people show their emotions on their faces. It goes through the 7 universal emotions and how to spot them in other people (and the feelings associated in order to feel them arise in yourself) in order to improve interpersonal communication. After taking the assessment recommended beforehand it’s a miracle I ever knew how anyone was feeling!! Ekman is also the real-life person that the show “Lie to Me” was based on, which definitely has made me want to read his books ever since watching the show. 

Quotes:

“But it can cause problems, for when we are gripped by an emotion we discount or ignore knowledge we already have that could disconfirm the emotion we are feeling, just as we ignore or discount new information coming to us from our environment that doesn’t fit our emotion. In other words, the same mechanism that guides and focuses our attention can distort our ability to deal with both new information and knowledge already stored in the brain.”

“Anger motivates us to try to change the world, to bring about social justice, to fight for human rights.”

“Emotion is not like an appendix, a vestigial apparatus we don’t need and should remove. Emotions are at the core of our life. They make life livable.”

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