Emotional Skills and Lie Detection for Negotiators and Lawyers

Emotional Skills 101

In collaboration with Paul Ekman – the scientific inspiration for Fox’s Lie to Me — Clark Freshman and Freshman Training offer scientific-based workshops and keynotes on working with emotion.  To register for upcoming workshops, including Continuing Legal Education, click here.

What Paul Ekman and Clark Freshman can teach you:

  • A scientific way to read concealed emotions better in one hour!
  • The science of microexpressions
  • How the face reveals emotions – regardless of culture!
  • How culture does affect reading facial expressions
  • The key role of culture in reading body movements and “language”
  • Why some people can’t “get over” negative emotions
  • Ways to respond to emotions – in yourself and others
  • Ways to test if your responses really help other

You can also learn to overcome some popular myths about emotion and how to handle emotion.

Myth: Emotions are all cultural.

Paul Ekman has traveled the world to refute this myth.  Remember that picture of Dr Lightman traveling to Papa New Guinea in Fox’s Lie to Me? That’s Paul Ekman’s body and actor Tim Roth’s face!  Paul Ekman showed people around the world pictures of different people, and people from very different cultures largely agreed on what emotion they saw.  Paul Ekman has done many other studies to prove that seven basic emotions reveal themselves in the same way in the face.  See more at www. Paulekman.com  It’s not about emotional intelligence, but learning emotional science and emotional skills.

Myth: Emotional skills are like any intelligence – not something you learn.

Published research shows Paul Ekman’s microexpression training tool helps even persons with types of autism and schizophrenia recognize emotions better – in less than an hour.  Again, it’s emotional knowledge and skills, not emotional intelligence.

Myth: Different people are hardwired with different emotions.

People may indeed differ on a variety of tendencies, including tendencies to negative emotion.  Recent research on neuroplasticity, however, suggests people really can change.  One study by Davidson, a co-author with Paul Ekman on a leading text on emotion, shows that people’s brain patterns changed after only eight weeks of mindfulness meditation.  Encouraged by Paul Ekman, the Shamata Project also has interesting findings when people practice other kinds of concentration exercises.  The project included many scientific tools, including coding using Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System.

Myth: Learning emotional skills is a pastime, not a business skill.

Decades of research show people with more positive emotion do better at nearly every activity – doctors with diagnoses; Stanford business school students at negotiation, and many others.  Learning emotional skills is good business.  And Freshman Training offers Continuing Legal Education in emotional skills, lie detection, and detecting deception.