Hilly San Francisco also a city of emotional ups and downs
San Franciscans’ emotions these days are roiling — over the new occupant of the White House, stratospheric housing prices, unending homeless tent encampments and constant BART meltdowns. But, hey, in the joyful column: Opening Day at AT&T Park is just two weeks away.
Fortunately for this emotional city, two of its residents are among the world’s foremost experts on emotions. At the behest of their good friend the Dalai Lama (seriously), Paul Ekman and his daughter, Eve Ekman, have created an “Atlas of Emotions” to help people figure out just what emotion they’re feeling in an attempt to determine what triggered it and what they can do about it. They’ll discuss their new atlas at the Exploratorium on Thursday.
One of my favorite aspects of San Francisco is just how many innovative, whip-smart experts live dotted all over the city — so many we haven’t even heard of some of them and come to take the city’s collective genius for granted. Any one of them
would be a superstar in Peoria, but here, they’re just part of the crowd.
Somehow, I’d never come across Paul Ekman, a professor emeritus in psychology at UCSF who’s best known for his research on decoding the emotions behind the tiniest facial expressions and gestures. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and in 2014, the Archives of Scientific Psychology ranked him the 15th-most-influential psychologist of the 21st century.
Ekman was the inspiration behind the main character in the now-defunct Fox television show “Lie to Me” and advised Pixar on creating the five emotions — joy, fear, disgust, anger and sadness — that live inside a girl’s head in the movie “Inside Out.”
The 83-year-old lives on the 25th floor of a Financial District apartment building with sweeping views of Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge. He and his wife, Mary Ann Mason, a UC Berkeley professor specializing in family law, have two children: Tom, 44, a teacher in Mexico, and Eve, 37, a post-doctoral fellow at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine who specializes in reducing stress and burnout.
Eve Ekman is a rising star in the study of emotions herself, having seen all of them in her previous work as a social worker in San Francisco General Hospital’s emergency room.
On a recent morning, the two sat in Paul Ekman’s living room to discuss the “Atlas of Emotions.” The senior Ekman wore bright red Nike sneakers and a black sport coat with gold buttons, his cane perched across his lap. His daughter sported big earrings and a tattoo reading “Frisco” on her inner ankle.
Paul Ekman credits his daughter, who was active in the Free Tibet movement in the 1990s, with persuading him to participate in a meeting of the Dalai Lama’s Mind and Life Institute in 2000.
“I thought this Dalai Lama business was just another one of the Bay Area fads,” he said with a laugh. But now the two men are close friends. Asked to describe the Dalai Lama, Paul Ekman said, “irreverent as hell.”
In 2014, the Dalai Lama commissioned the Ekmans to develop the “Atlas of Emotions,” an online guide to human emotions that has the goal of helping people achieve peace and happiness outside of religion.
“It’s not to get rid of emotion — emotions are at the center of life,” Paul Ekman said. “But we need a map of emotions if we want to get to a calm state of mind.”
Eve Ekman gave the example of a friend not calling when she says she will. It’s easy to jump to anger, sadness or fear that she doesn’t like you anymore — or jump back decades to when your brother always left you out. But the friend may be busy or sick or simply forgot, and remaining calm about the missed call is surely the best way to go.
“It’s recognizing your own role in your emotional response,” Eve Ekman said. “It’s watching our own mind and noticing our perceptions instead of treating emotions as hard, fixed realities.”
Sometimes, though, the initial emotion is appropriate and constructive. Paul Ekman pointed to the city’s homeless problem, which doesn’t seem to get any better despite all the effort and money spent on it.
“You can be so upset about the homeless on the streets of San Francisco when the temperature goes below 30 degrees that you decide you need to spend time doing something about it,” he said.
The atlas describes the same five emotions as those devised for “Inside Out” and provides a wide array of emotions within those from least severe to most severe.
For example, fear goes from trepidation to terror, with explanations for everything in between. It then describes all the actions one might take, from freezing to screaming. It discusses triggers for those fears — some are universal, such as a threat to personal safety, while others are learned, such as a fear of public speaking.
The atlas also discusses moods, which are related but more long-lasting than a quick emotion and don’t have clear triggers. Anxiety is related to fear, but is usually not prompted by one episode, such as having to address a large crowd. The atlas ends with a discussion of calmness, an ideal baseline, it says, “in which emotions arise when triggered and then recede.”
Paul Ekman said the work has helped him in his own life to lessen his propensity for “regrettable angry episodes.”
“Fact check?” Eve Ekman interjected, looking at her mother.
“Well, he’s gotten a lot better,” her mother said.
“I never hit anybody after grammar school, but I used to be fairly assaultive, even in my writing,” Paul Ekman said.
Paul Ekman said humans are the only species that can think about emotions they’ve already had, such as puzzling over why you got so mad at your spouse yesterday. Humans are also the only species capable of having emotions about emotions, like being frustrated that you got so angry.
“Emotions are not only the juice of life, but they should be able to help you, not be problematic for you,” he continued.
It’s something to remember — and strive for — next time you’re stuck on BART.