Want to learn the ideas in Emotions Revealed better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman Ph.D. here.

Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.

Video Summaries of Emotions Revealed

We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Emotions Revealed, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Paul Ekman Ph.D.

1-Page Summary of Emotions Revealed

Overview

Body language is often as important as the words we speak. It’s a way to communicate what we can’t say out loud, which makes it very useful. There are many facial expressions that show our emotions and feelings, and they’re all part of body language. We need to understand this so that we can be better communicators in general.

You will also learn that the human eyebrow has an emotional range and can be used to communicate emotions. You’ll discover how to avoid a fight by looking at someone’s jaw, as well as how you can tell if someone is happy or sad just by looking into their eyes.

Big Idea #1: Our emotions are the product of evolution and are still attuned to the concerns of our ancestors.

If you have ever been embarrassed after crying during a Pixar movie, there’s no need to feel that way. In fact, outward displays of emotion are useful evolutionary tools.

In fact, these reactions are often uncontrollable because they’re innate. They can be traced back to our ancestors who had to deal with similar situations in the past.

For example, animals were a main threat to our ancestors. The fear of these predators is now imprinted on our brain so that we are always afraid when presented with an image of spiders or snakes. Swedish psychologist Arne Ohman conducted an experiment in 1993 to test this theory. He showed his subjects images of spiders and flowers accompanied by electric shocks, then repeated the procedure with different images but without the shock.

In an experiment, a shock was paired with the image of a spider. When the spider was shown alone after that, people reacted fearfully to it. However, when the flower was shown alone after that, they didn’t react as fearfully to it. This suggests that our emotions are inherited from our ancestors and their experiences (such as spiders).

Big Idea #2: Childhood trauma can lead to volatile emotions, especially when it repeats ancestral patterns.

Sometimes our emotions defy logic, and we get scared of things that don’t really make sense. For example, people who are afraid of heights may still feel scared when they’re standing on a tall building even if there’s a railing around them to prevent them from falling.

Emotions are powerful, especially if they’re the result of a childhood trauma. Consider Tim, one of the author’s clients. As a child, his father would tease him in ways that were hurtful and insensitive to Tim. For example, when learning how to ride a bike for the first time, he’d fall off it sometimes. His father would laugh at him and tell other people about this too. This stuck with Tim and made him extremely sensitive to teasing as an adult; he lashes out irrationally when teased even playfully over losing a board game or something like that.

If we trace our emotional reactions back to our ancestors, they were even more volatile. One example is the dean of the author’s university who remained calm despite faculty rejection of proposals that he put a lot of effort into.

When he gets stuck in traffic, the dean gets very angry. Unfortunately, this is a common reaction that goes back to our ancestors.

Of course, our ancestors didn’t have cars. But territory was very important to them, as was being able to move freely. This is why they were upset when their opponents held them back and prevented them from moving around freely.

Traffic jams can trigger an ancient emotional pattern and cause irrational outbursts.

Big Idea #3: Sadness is revealed though raised inner eyebrows, contracted cheeks and widened lips.

Now that you understand the source of emotions, how do we recognize them in others? Let’s take a look at one particular photo to see what we can learn. In 1971, Bettye Shirley lost her son to a pedophile ring in Texas. The expression on her face is clearly one of sadness, but why exactly is it so obvious?