What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (Facs)

by Erika L. Rosenberg and Paul Ekman

Book Overview

While we have known for centuries that facial expressions can reveal what people are thinking and feeling, it is only recently that the face has been studied scientifically for what it can tell us about internal states, social behavior, and psychopathology. Today's widely available, sophisticated measuring systems have allowed us to conduct a wealth of new research on facial behavior that has contributed enormously to our understanding of the relationship...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195179641
• ISBN13: 9780195179644
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

For Figurative Artists

For visual artists wanting to hone anatomy and facial expression skills, in addition to learning about faces through studio sessions and drawing books, scientific journals, and perhaps an independent study of ones own on individual "racial" facial morphologies, will give you a better understanding of the hows and whys of facial expression. If you can get a university library card and borrow this, or find out which journal articles are in it, I highly recommend learning from it. If the terminology loses you, instead of throwing the book down, or dismissing it because it seems jargonous (it's not intended to be, these people have studied for a long time with this language, and work better together when using words with relevant, descriptive meanings), learn it and try to understand the study from their point of view.

very complex

This is a very techinal book, containing papers poublished in scientific journals. While I liked it very much, it was a tough read.

What the face reveals

This book is far more technical and should be considered advanced among those that are attempting to understand body language.

Emotion, Personality, Theraputic Outcomes, and More

I am a contributor to this book and know many of the other authors therein, but receive no compensation from its sale. Having declared this possible conflict of interest, I can recommend purchase of this book if you are interested in learning what can be discovered from the face through measurement of facial muscular action in scientific research. Its approximately 500 pages contains 22 scientific articles, mostly published previously in journals, that report research studies conducted in the late 1970s to the early 1990s, most towards this later date. These articles cover a diverse range of topics, methods, and principles having to do with the relationship between facial expression and emotion; clinical diagnosis, treatment, and outcome; and other related issues. The editors's selection process, based on the use in the study of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS, a method for measuring facial behavior), has included competent research with above average interest, thoughtful reflection, theoretical and practical relevance, and plain good sense that generally exceeds what you might find, for example, in your typical social psychology journal. The authors of the articles work in many places around the world and represent most of the people in the vanguard of the FACS movement and the new approaches to studying behavior and emotion. This book is particularly helpful if you are new to the study of facial behavior or have not been diligent in collecting the important articles using facial measurement, which are published many different journals. The book provides an efficient vehicle to catch up on the significant issues, findings, trends, and controversies in the areas covered, including the quality and usefulness of the information provided by the face, the relationship of facial expression to emotion, whether emotion is a coherent response system, differences between genuine and false smiles, expression in pathological states, affect in the psychotheraputic process, etc. The included works provide a solid foundation for understanding how facial measurement contributes to investigating behavioral science problems. Even in the unlikely event that you have previously read all the published works reprinted here, this volume has value because each chapter has at least one afterward that expands on the original work in revealing and useful ways that bring you up to date on the topic, and there is one thought provoking article by Ekman et al. on the relation between facial behavior and psychiatric outcomes that you will not find elsewhere. Also, the editors include their own new chapters introducing, and finally, summarizing and integrating the works included. A table of contents, forward by M. Brewster Smith, original source references, author list, and a lengthy subject index are included. Take a look at the table of contents provided on this site to see more details. The overall statement of this book is that the face contains important data about