Should We Torture Suspected Terrorists?

A closer look at interrogation techniques

July 26, 2016 Suspected Terrorists The Republican candidate for the presidency has recommended torturing suspected terrorists. While former Vice President Dick Cheney was known to advocate the use of torture in some circumstances, many thought torture had been abandoned by President Obama. The president chose not to condemn those who in the past may have used torture, a policy justified …

Eve Ekman on Cultivating Emotional Balance

Finding insight in awareness

June 23, 2016 Our emotional responses shape our experience of the world. Emotions can feel profoundly enriching, as when we feel pride from great success or the elation of new love. They can also feel painfully unbearable, as with profound grief or embarrassment. Sometimes we may want to hold on to emotions forever, and other times we may want to …

Atlas of Emotions in the New York Times

An interactive map of emotions

May 6, 2016 As featured in The New York Times (Inner Peace? The Dalai Lama Made a Website for That) ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Dalai Lama, who tirelessly preaches inner peace while chiding people for their selfish, materialistic ways, has commissioned scientists for a lofty mission: to help turn secular audiences into more self-aware, compassionate humans. That is, of course, no …

What Scientists Who Study Emotion Agree About

The nature of emotions

April 12, 2016 Originally published in the Perspectives on Psychological Science What Scientists Who Study Emotion Agree About Paul Ekman University of California, San Francisco and Paul Ekman Group, LLC Abstract In recent years, the field of emotion has grown enormously- recently, nearly 250 scientists were identified who are studying emotion. In this article, I report a survey of the …

Trusting Can Be Dangerous

Evaluating truthfulness

December 8, 2015 Misjudging a Peron I have spent a lot of time in the last thirty years advising police, both regional and national, on how to evaluate truthfulness. You can see some of the training tools we used here. Police make mistakes, not just with black people, although implicit or explicit racism causes a higher rate of mistaken judgments …

Ineffectively Testing the Effectiveness of TSA

The SPOT program

November 11, 2015 Trouble with ineffective testing TSA personnel in the SPOT (Screening Passengers with Observational Techniques) program have come under repeated, unjustified criticism. Their failure to catch people pretending to be bad guys is totally irrelevant to whether they can, or will, be able to catch the real bad guys. To test that, we have to get back to …

The Science of “Inside Out”

Behind the scenes of the hit Pixar movie

July 3, 2015 As seen on the New York Times How Emotions Work FIVE years ago, the writer and director Pete Docter of Pixar reached out to us to talk over an idea for a film, one that would portray how emotions work inside a person’s head and at the same time shape a person’s outer life with other people. …

Dr. Paul Ekman on Torture

Choosing humane interrogation techniques

August 17, 2015 As seen in the Huffington Post I was approached soon after 9/11 by a senior psychologist, who held office in APA, to participate in the government’s newly developing interrogation program. I declined, although I had already developed techniques for establishing better emotional connections with interviewees, through my work on nonverbal behavior, facial expressions and gestures. And I …

A Force for Good

The Dalai Lama's vision for our world

June 22, 2015 A note from Daniel Goleman: As I was interviewing the Dalai Lama for my book A FORCE FOR GOOD: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World, Paul Ekman’s work came up repeatedly. The Dalai Lama places great importance, for one, on Paul’s mapping the emotions – a tool that can help people get a better grip on …

Investigating Terrorism

Current political, legal and psychological issues

John Pearse, Ph.D Scientific Advisor to Paul Ekman Group January 20, 2015 Unfortunately terrorism is all around us as recent global events continue to demonstrate.  Across America, throughout Europe and around the world people took to the streets to peacefully protest against the terrorist atrocities that had left 17 dead in Paris, France last week. The themes emerging from this …