MPT was spawned from the DOD’s innovation arm DARPA and DHS in the aftermath of 9/11. Humans get tired, after all, and their levels of observation or interpretation may vary.Įkman, in fact, presently sits on the board of a nascent company, Machine Perception Technologies (MPT), which specializes in automating facial expressions analysis based on his FACS foundation.
#PAUL EKMAN HOW TO#
And while he spends a lot of time these days training intelligence, military, and law enforcement officers on how to uncover a subject’s deception or concealment in a split second (when there is no time for laborious, frame-by-frame video analysis or FACS catalog consultation), he also acknowledges the need for a “backup” system whereby computers automate the FACS work. (Ekman went against the grain and celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead to prove naturalist Charles Darwin’s hypothesis that facial expressions of emotions–anger, disgust, contempt, fear, surprise, sadness, happiness–are innate and universal in earthly humans, and not culturally determined). He is universally credited for developing the Facial Action Coding System ( FACS), a comprehensive dictionary of facial expression measurements that has become the scientific underpinning for human observer and automated facial analysis around the world, across varied academic and commercial fields. In life or death matters, the human approach, which relies on specially trained facial observers to gauge perpetrator deception, is significantly more accurate than the automated method, according to Ekman. There are two ways to go about facial emotion measurement: a human way to analyze facial “microexpressions” and emotions and a technological, automated method. And others’ applications are helping those with cognitive disabilities be better understood or simply enabling people to be more in tune with their emotions. Classrooms are putting his methodology to work. Ekman has written a book, Emotional Awareness, with the Dalai Lama. But the category goes way beyond the mere branding or advertising uses and delves into a realm that would wow Philip K. Apple and Microsoft have been building their own capabilities while Google has just recruited a facial expressions expert from a company Ekman advises. The CIA and Cars studio Pixar alike are users of facial emotion analysis services. He’s helped pioneer a field called facial emotion measurement, which shares some ties with both face-recognition and neuromarketing. “They used my work, and it was very successful,” Ekman tells Fast Company.
#PAUL EKMAN SERIES#
Ekman has provided training to a whole series of people who were guards at Abu Ghraib prison, too, in how to extract information and truth without torture. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan how to determine enemy combatant veracity or intent to kill. New applications are assisting Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents in screening for potential terrorists at airports or teaching U.S. In the years after 9/11, Ekman, the expert who inspired the fib-hunting character played by Tim Roth in the Fox series Lie To Me, has worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others to help develop both people and machines that read faces for emotions and help stop disastrous events on all levels. They would have triggered detainments, says San Francisco-based psychologist Paul Ekman. He answers such questions as: How does our body signal to others whether we are slightly sad or anguished, peeved or enraged? Can we learn to distinguish between a polite smile and the genuine thing? Can we ever truly control our emotions? Packed with unique exercises and photographs, and a new chapter on emotions and lying that encompasses security and terrorism as well as gut decisions, Emotions Revealed is an indispensable resource for navigating our emotional world.Expert humans or face-reading machines could have saved thousands of lives on 9/11 by detecting the emotional states of hijackers. In Emotions Revealed, Ekman distils decades of research into a practical, mind-opening, and life-changing guide to reading the emotions of those around us. As featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink, Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System offers intense training in recognising feelings in spouses, children, colleagues, even strangers on the street. Renowned psychologist Paul Ekman explains the roots of our emotions: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness, and shows how they cascade across our faces, providing clear signals to those who can identify the clues.