blog/content/reviews/books/emotions-revealed-understanding-faces-and-feelings.md

+++
title = "Emotions Revealed: Understanding Faces and Feelings - Paul Ekman"
date = 2014-12-20

[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "paul ekman", "psychology", "reviews"]
+++

[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156462.Emotions_Revealed):
A renowned expert in nonverbal communication, Paul Ekman led a revolution in
our scientific understanding of emotions. In Emotions Revealed, he assembles
his research and theories to provide a comprehensive look at the evolutionary
roots of human emotions, including anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and
happiness.

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{{ stars(stars=3) }}

**Emotions: Learning, therapy and socialization**

There is one thing weird about this book: although it explores the expressions
on people's faces, going through lenghty explanations about what they mean and
which context they may happen, there are also parts explaining why you would
feel something like that and how to react when you notice people doing them.
It's part explanation about emotions, part teaching you about your own
emotions (like in a therapy session) and part how to react when people show
them (socialization). In a full package.

The problem I found is not about the book, but about the Kindle edition:
Because we are exploring expressions in people's faces, we need images. But
images on Kindle is terrible and in very low quality. It makes kinda hard to
see that little muscle that you move only when you're feeling some emotion
when the image showing it have almost no details due quality.

There is a test in the end of the book, explaining exactly what you should be
looking for. The problem is, again, the photo quality in the book.

It's an interesting book, specially when it shows that our reactions (face
reactions) to some emotions happen in every society, every culture, but hard
to follow due those bad images.