Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Expressions

As an investigator, adding this education allows me to know what it is that has I have noticed in the past but didn't know what exactly I was seeing. The book is well written, easy to follow, has a great practice section, and leads you easily from one topic to the next. I'm really glad I bought it, small price to pay for an excellent education. Thank You Dr Ekman!

I've been familiar with Ekmans work for several years now; I have found nothing else that even comes close to providing the reader with the knowledge they need to master the science of reading the emotions of others by decoding their facial expressions. Ekman is the king!

Ekman is a leading authority on the study of the facial expressions and their relation to emotion, and this book is a methodical and thorough (for the layperson, at least) introduction to the field, with special focus on recognizing what he calls the six basic universally expressed emotions: happiness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust/contempt, and sadness. Ekman provides clear, well-detailed instructions for recognizing each of these emotions, and the book includes plenty of photos to illustrate the different facial contortions of each emotion. The only complaint I would have is that I had to do a lot of page flipping back and forth to read Ekman's remarks and subsequently refer to the relevant picture. Perhaps a future edition could be better formatted to make it easier for the reader to view the expression alongside Ekman's comments. In addition to writing about specific emotions, Ekman also covers some fascinating related topics such as recognizing facial deceit and discovering the patterns of one's own facial expressions, i.e., what you're telling the world with your own face. Ekman is an academic and his writing shows it; he's precise, methodical, thorough, and careful in the extent of his claims. Readers who are new to the subject of reading facial expressions but are seriously committed to learning about it will find this an invaluable book. (Ekman's later work, "Emotions Revealed," is also a great read and contains much of the same information as "Unmasking the Face," although I found the former to be lighter on technical information and practice faces, and more focused on the larger reflections Ekman has made looking back on his work over the last few decades. In other words, both books are great, but "Unmasking the Face" is a bit more technical and thorough, and therefore a better book to pick up for learning how to recognize facial expressions.)

This seems to be an excellent resource for someone who would like to study facial expressions or improve one's ability to recognize emotions by looking at faces. The text is not just a popular blurb but a fully scientifically backed and high-level textbook designed for a serious student. There are exercises, suggestions on how to overcome one's difficulties or shortcomings, lots of photographs of faces, detailed comments on how certain facial features reflect certain emotions, and so on. I am looking forward to studying everything this book has to offer. Worth every penny!