Paul Ekman is an American psychologist who is known for his work in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. Ekman was born in 1934 in Washington, DC, graduated from Adelphi University with a PhD in clinical psychology. He was an intern at Langly Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute who later becoming consultant. In addition, he was a psychology professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco. Ekman received many awards that named him one of one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century by the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org). Dr. Ekman is an expert on expressions, the physiology of emotion, and detecting deception known as “the human lie detector”. …show more content…
He had a patient who denied being suicidal so that she can be released from the hospital. (Ekman, 2009, pg.33). Ekman amongst experienced psychiatrist and psychologist were fooled by the patient. Upon reviewing the video tapes of the interviews of the patient with the doctor in slow motion. Ekman discovered that the patient’s demonstrated facial gestures called micro- expressions that indicate she was being deceitful. Ekman explained, that micro expressions are rapid movement of facial muscles that occur when people are deliberately trying to conceal an emotion they are feeling (Ekman, 2009, pg.34). Ekman believed that “when” and “how” people lie and tell the truth can help in understanding many human interactions. He conducted an experiment in which the participants had to conceal intense negative emotions they felt after watching a bloody surgical film. The participants were instructed to convince the interviewer they viewed and enjoyed a film of beautiful flowers. Ekman discovered that participants exposed specific expressions of the face that helped determine whether the participant was lying or being truthful. (Ekman, 2009, pg.40). His work helped doctors identify when patients falsely claim not to be depressed or suicidal so that they can later commit suicide when not being supervised. He developed training programs to help people detect