Paul Ekman
and universal emotions
QUID+ has learned from Paul Ekman the importance of emotions and non-verbal communication in our everyday lives, and that regardless of where we were born some emotions are identical all over the world and help us to understand others.
Paul Ekman is an American psychologist who has focused his work on understanding emotions through facial expressions. Ekman was the first to show that some emotions and the associated facial expressions are not determined by our culture or traditions, but are instead universal and shared by people all over the world. In 1972, he followed an isolated culture in Papua New Guinea and interviewed its members, showing them pictures of facial expressions on various faces. Although the indigenous people had never had any contact or interaction with Westerners, they were able to recognise certain emotions, which Ekman describes as “basic”, universal expressions: anger, disgust, sadness, enjoyment, fear and surprise. Each emotion corresponds to a facial expression, which is one of the most primitive and fastest forms of response to an external stimulus and one of the most effective and powerful means of communication.
