Prelude
This article is a spiritual continuation of the earlier digression on Mindfulness and the role of the brain shaping reality itself. This time, we will focus on the practical application of emotions detection. We will do so by investigating Paul Ekman and his research on this topic. Well, then… take it away!
Introduction
We are posing a question, in order to regulate emotions, achieve emotional control, and much more importantly, use this knowledge for any benefit infield, we need to ask: what are emotions, and where do they come from? Because there exists no emotion without a cause, and when the discussion starts from the emotions and expands outwards (I feel X, therefore Y…), it is doomed to miss the point. There is always a Z before: Event Z cause feeling X, therefore Y…
Emotions, at the bare minimum of their definition, are internal interpreters of external states of the world. When you stand at the edge of a cliff, your hands start sweating, and you call this fear. Then it is not the fear that warns you that standing there is dangerous; instead, it is the essence of the situation – that it is dangerous – that is causing the fear, which you understand emotionally.
Proving this, that emotions are a hidden language of the unconscious part of the brain, is not hard, as you saw. Explaining the root cause of this language is a bit more complicated. Because the root cause where we will be able to interpret that language, and hence make practical use of it. I will present two theories that have been used in various ways by the seduction community and provide my own thoughts and commentary.
Paul Ekman – Innate emotions
There is a case to be made that emotions have to serve some evolutionary purpose. They are a product of successive generations, no different than your height or eye color is. And in no different way than hunger aims to make you find food, so emotions are there to help you survive in the social battlefield of Homo Sapiens.
Take this theory to its natural conclusion, and you will end up with the following observations:
- Emotions should have consistent building blocks. Not unlike taste has 5 basic receptors. This will be the response signals that the body is reacting to.
- These basic emotions should be in every human and every culture. Hence, be universal. This is what it means to be hardwired and innate.
- These basic emotions, since they are universal, should have a bodily expression that is again universally present. Not unlike a hiccup or yawning have their functions.
Hence, starting from this viewpoint, that emotions are hardwired and evolved like any other trait; we have a baseline to what to look for.
The basic emotions
This is where Paul Ekman comes in. The consensus from the outcome of his research is that there are 7 basic emotions, and every other emotion is a combination of these:
- Happiness
- Contempt
- Sadness
- Anger
- Surprise
- Disgust
- Fear
Each of these emotions has a specific purpose of existence, and it is a response to something external. Hence, solidifying their hardwired nature. In particular:
Take a moment to study this chart, because the way the emotions are expressed, are related to their triggers. For example anger causes you to frown, in order to focus the eyes on the threat (the cause of anger). Fear makes your eyes wide open, in order to be able to absorb more information from your surroundings, etc.
Universality of Expression
The second point of this excursion is that emotions are universal. That means every human being is going to exhibit them in the same way. Hmm… let’s think about that last part.
Emotions are not something within our control; they are externally induced – that is what the theory implies. If you stand next to a hungry lion, all humans will feel fear, and that fear is going to be expressed in the face, in the same way for all. We have a window to the hidden language of the soul.
If you learn how to read these emotions from their so-called facial expressions or micro-expressions, then you will know what the other person is feeling (i.e., his true interpretation of the situation), despite what he is saying, he thinks or think he feels. Well, what should we look for then?
The main areas of focus are eyebrows, eyes, lips, and cheeks. The upper portion of the face (eyebrows, eyelids and checks) has to do with directing attention for the eyes, not unlike how a cat’s ears are going to move to the direction of the sound. Opening the eyes more means absorb more information, while frowning or squeezing means focusing attention. The lower part, mouth, lips and its surroundings has to do with either showing teeth (universal sign of aggression in the animal kingdom), or priming you to scream, shout, or make other relevant sounds (for example think of a girl’s scream in response to danger that aims to draw attention to her). I will provide a full summary below:
Click the emotion here for a relevant infographic from Ekman directly as well: Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Disgust, Contempt, Anger, Fear.
Practical usefulness
Most of these emotions flash on people’s faces for milliseconds. Therefore, the window to the soul is very short. It requires some training and practice to quickly catch flickering emotions. I believe there are training tools from Ekman exactly for this. A micro-expression is flashed of 0.2 to half a second, then you are asked what you saw.
There you have it, this is the practical Game application, determining the state of the girl from her facial expressions. It will not make her like you more or anything, but at least it will let you know if she already likes you. If you say something that you thought should make her smile, but she flashes an anger face, you should micro-calibrate and change topics.
This can be especially useful in social forms of Game, eg, nightgame and social circle, where the Player needs to balance multiple conflicting interests between the members. Additionally, social games will make people act against their true intentions. Hence, true emotional detection can yield dividends.
The easiest way to begin with this, is to study the diagram I provided above, the photographs linked form Ekman, and then try to detect emotions in real life. Don’t sweat over it, begin with simple and easy emotions to catch (the more intense the feeling in the person, the more pronounce will be its facial expression), and then work your way from there. In theatre specifically, actors are trained to exaggerate facial emotions, so that is a good source of intel as well. I would urge to do this outside of your normal approach sessions, because those are already overload it with other variables. Implement emotional detection only when you have mastered it and it comes as second nature.
Against Paul Ekman
Now that I have presented his theory in full, it is time to critique it. Albeit marginally useful in practice, this is not a theory I personally advocate. In the next entry of this series, I will discuss the constructed theory of emotion, something that I believe is a more sound interpretation.
Criticism against Paul Ekman is multifold, so let us see some of it.
Methodology
Ekman’s theory is essentially voted by consensus. Ekman ran around the world, asked people, “Does this look like happiness?” and if enough people agreed, he distilled his core facial expressions of happiness. Rinse and repeat for the other emotions as well.
This is something that sounds plausible, but it is as reliable as asking people with a questionnaire about their sexual lives and the causes of attraction. It can work, you might be collecting garbage data.
Universality
Much of the so-called universality of emotions stems from the fact that all cultures shown a picture of happiness, agreed that this looks like happiness. In particular, hunter-gatherers around the world agreed, which made a strong case that the emotion has evolved and is hardwired. Nothing wrong with this, this is how most of sociological theory is generated (that is why I feel the whole field is trash), but at least you would expect maturity on his data gathering process…
Actual accounts of his field reports when he was in contact with primitives would suggest very unethical behaviour in testing his hypothesis. He was forcing answers based on yes/no questions that were heavily biased. This is not even hidden, this is from his actual papers and journal entries.
Emotional intelligence
Many of the so-called EQ tests (the emotional equivalent of IQ) around the world test specifically his theory. They provided images of certain basic emotions and ask participants which emotion they saw. The more emotions people can detect, the higher their EQ.
Albeit sound in theory, I believe this practice is at best retarded, because it beats the purpose. On one hand, Ekman came up with his emotions by asking people “Is this emotion X” and taking consensus votes. On the other hand, when he presents his theory as a universal EQ test, the scores are quite bad. So what gives?
The useful part of his theory
There can be some debate whether this theory is correct and how much useful it is for Game, however, there is one aspect that should be mentioned. It is not about the emotions themselves or their expression, it is about the way we create hypotheses in lie detection.
The official version from Ekman says: if there is a contradiction between verbals and facial expressions, then facial expression is the truth. The verbals get trumped, so the person lies.
Fair enough, let’s put this train of thought on a different framework. Before any action, make your hypothesis, for example:
- If I give this person 5$, she should be happier.
Now gauge that person’s reaction. Was she happier when she received the free money? If not, for example, she became startled or even felt guilty about it, then… this is not a lie, but hold that thought! That is a window to her inner character.
Her reaction is what it is, so you need to ask: why would she not be happy about getting the free money? New hypothesis based on this intel and we are already one step closer at profiling her character. For example, we now know for sure she is not a person that likes to take advantage of others, or receive undeserved rewards
Whatever your new hypothesis on her personality, this is an informed step forward; this is the key to advanced empathy!
In the next entry of this series, we will explore the constructed theory of emotion, an alternative to Ekman, that considers emotions as a fabrication of the brain.
