PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Inside the Psychologist’s Studio Paul Ekman1 interviewed by Robert W. Levenson2 1University of California, San Francisco, and 2University of California, Berkeley Robert Levenson: You attended the University of Chicago chance.’’ I visited him when I got my Ph.D. I went and gave him a as a 15-year-old, jumping directly from 10th grade in South copy of my first book. By that point he said, ‘‘I always knew you Orange, New Jersey, to one of the top colleges in the country. had it in you.’’ What was that experience like for you, and how much influence My classmates at the University of Chicago were incredible: did the Chicago years have on the kind of scholar, scientist, and Susan Sontag sat next to me for 3 years. Mike Nichols and Elaine person you became? May, Shelly Berman, and two people who became congressmen. Paul Ekman: In many ways, it ruined me for academia, be- It was a make-or-break place, because the milieu was, you cause I have never (other than at St. John’s, where I’ve recently couldn’t do anything unless you could do it better than anyone in lectured) found any other place where books were idolized and the world. Well, how many of us can do something better than where the emphasis really was on scholarship. In most of our anybody in the world? So we had a very high suicide rate. great universities, the emphasis, at least in the behavioral, I’ve always believed that many of the people I have most re- physical, and biological sciences, is on research. But scholar- spected, turns out, at some point, they were at the University of ship is different, and cuts across all disciplines. So, I love the Chicago. So it was an amazing place—full of misfits. Wewere all University of Chicago, and I feel like I owe my whole life to them, misfits. That’s why we were there. We couldn’t get along with and I donate money to them every year because of that. school, and we couldn’t get along with our parents. So it was the Levenson: And, recently, you were honored by them . reform school. My parents were always showing me the reform Ekman: Yes, they gave me a Doctor of Humane Letters. Then schools advertised in the New York Times Magazine—military I wondered, what were the inhumane letters? I started thinking, schools. That’s what they were trying to put me in, but fortu- should I say B sounded very humane? But Z? Anyhow, there was nately, I got to Chicago. a 3-day celebration. And they gave me a list of all the people who Levenson: From Chicago, you went to Adelphi University, had received such degrees. They prided themselves on never and you have said that, at the time, nonverbal communication giving an honorary degree to either a politician—the Queen of was considered to be a dead end by the psychological estab- England was turned down—or a donor. It was only for scholar- lishment. Yet you began to develop what would become a life- ship. long pursuit of that topic. How did that come about, and what in So, actually, it meant an enormous amount. And, as these the world were you thinking? things usually work, it was a particular person in the psychology Ekman: Well, I applied to 24 graduate schools, 23 of which department who was really taken with my work, who pushed for turned me down, because I honestly said that I wanted to become them to give me this for some years. Tom Trabasso, whom many a private practitioner of psychotherapy. Nobody told me that of you may know, just died in the past few days. Very regrettable. you’re supposed to lie and conceal that. And so, everybody turned Levenson: It was actually a very heady time there. There was me down, except Adelphi, which wanted to train practitioners. I’m the Great Books Program, with Mortimer Adler’s influence, and the black sheep. I’m the only one, I think, with one other ex- your class was quite a remarkable group of people, all chosen on ception, they graduated who didn’t go into private practice. the basis of a University of Chicago–developed IQ test. But it was wonderful clinical training. And both doing and Ekman: Yes. observing psychotherapy, I became convinced that there was an Levenson: It didn’t really matter what your grades were in awful lot in the face and the body apart from the words, and if we high school? were to really understand the process, we needed to be able to Ekman: No, they didn’t care. My high school principal said, measure it. Little did I know how long it would take. ‘‘When they read the letter that I’m writing, you’ve got no And clinicians thought this was wonderful. Adelphi was ba- sically staffed by people who weren’t academics. There was one This interview was conducted at a public session held on Friday, May 27, 2005, academic, a Skinnerian. I was originally a Skinnerian re- as part of the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, held in Los searcher on nonverbal behavior, if you can imagine that, be- Angeles, California. The format approximated that of the television program cause that was the only tradition I learned. ‘‘Inside the Actors Studio.’’ Address correspondence to Robert W. Levenson, 3210 Tolman Hall, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, At NIMH [the National Institute of Mental Health]—which CA 94720-1650, e-mail: [email protected]. ended up supporting me for more than 40 years—I was largely 270 Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science Volume 1—Number 3 Paul Ekman interviewed by Robert W. Levenson supported by the clinicians. When an emotion panel was formed master’s and doctoral dissertations. Most studies I did took 5 to for the first time, I was turned down, because I wasn’t doing what 10 years to complete. Because there were no teaching obliga- was then considered mainstream emotion research. But clini- tions at UCSF—none—you had to beg to teach. I begged to cians knew that there was important information in gesture and teach. At one point, after a lot of begging, they gave me 1 hour expression, and here was a guy who was willing to study it. You out of the 4-year medical-school curriculum. But, you know, didn’t have to have already done the study or have pilot studies teaching was a very high-status thing, and we had too many to demonstrate feasibility. I lived on soft money for 14 years; all I faculty. had to do was write up a good, interesting, high-risk idea, in So I had a lot of time. I could spend half of every year out of the those days, and they would fund me. country, which I did for a number of years doing cross-cultural Levenson: You probably know that I love orchids. work. Thus, without intention, without planning (I can take no Ekman: Oh, yes, I know that. It’s one of the strange things credit), it turned out to be a great environment for me, and for the about you, Robert. kind of work that I ended up being drawn to do. Levenson: Putting aside my strangeness for a moment, or- Levenson: I think if you had been in some kind of perfectly chids are impossibly beautiful plants that grow in impossibly supporting, warm environment, you would have turned out very difficult environments. You grew up in a family environment differently. where pressure was put on you to become a physician. You at- Ekman: Well, Berkeley’s IPAR [Institute of Personality As- tended a very clinically oriented graduate program at Adelphi, sessment and Research], whose current incarnation you head, where the emphasis was on training psychotherapists. You spent tried to hire me. When Nevitt Sanford left, I was their first choice your entire professional career as a psychologist in a department to take his position. But the department couldn’t agree. The of psychiatry. Yet, despite these impossibly difficult environ- psychology department at Berkeley ended up losing that posi- ments, your scientific career flourished. So, what kind of an tion. But I think it turned out to be very fortunate. orchid are you? In the late 60s, I got invited by the students at UCLA [Uni- Ekman: Well, I have thought a good deal in the past 5 or 6 versity of California, Los Angeles]—I don’t know how they heard years, as I’ve been working on a memoir, on why I ended up about me—to give a talk at the psychology department. And spending an entire life in a medical school. This is usually not a afterwards, Harold Kelley came up to me and said, ‘‘Well, that very good place, particularly for a clinical psychologist, but it’s was very interesting, but what does that have to do with psy- not as bad for an academic. Still, it was odd to be doing basic chology?’’ And I said, ‘‘That’s not my problem. But it’s very in- research in a psychiatry department. teresting that what is important to you is whether it’s related to In some sense, I think I was defying my father, who was a psychology. I’m out to understand a phenomenon. And I don’t pediatrician, by not doing what he wanted me to do, which was to care whether it’s psychology or semiotics or ethology or an- become a pediatrician.