Unmasking The Face Summary

Have you ever wondered if a person was angry? What if it turns out that they were just upset and the whole situation was misread by a simple facial expression? In the book written by authors Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Expressions, readers are introduced to the power of emotion and the ways to detect emotion in the faces that surround them. This book highlights major emotions-such as surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and happiness, and how they can be detected by changes in your forehead, your eyebrows, your lips, and much more. As a blueprint for detecting the types of expressions in faces, this book helps to guide readers on the path not only to understand others,

Though, this book addresses the issue that knowledge well beyond the basic emotions is never acquired, unless an individual catches themselves in dire circumstances. Even then, the techniques and practices of psychotherapy only focus on few emotions. This book encompasses how to acquire the ability to be able to catch the cues of emotion and how to read them accurately. Also, it argues how people are not born with the natural ability to understand the cues of facial expression, it is acquired through experience and learning. Much like if a person was born into a family that guarded their emotions, and taught that individual to create a poker face to mask all that they were feeling. It is often the influence of family and environment that is a direct link to emotion and its expression in someone’s face. In order to fully understand thoughts and feelings, people must have the skill to detect them and be able to approach the situation in an appropriate manner. Learning how to be able to understand others not only helps the individual acquire knowledge about their environment, thus understanding can transcend into the power of understanding