In a long interview in Dutch popular science journal Psychologie of today, Paul Ekman ends with the following statement: (source)

“Often people think I am a magician who can read minds. But I really can not do that. Just by paying attention really well, by being very secure, and by putting all the pieces of the puzzle [facial expression, head and eye movements, gestures, context, and story consistency] together I can make a statement about my strong impression about someone’s real motives. That’s all.”

I think that is a very fair and true statement from the founder discoverer of Mankind’s universal facial expression of emotions. There was also a test. I managed to score 7 out of 7 from pictures of a girl enacting basic emotions. And still I do not consider myself a good judge of other people’s emotional state.

As I am typing this, I wonder if my wife is cross with me over something I neglected to do… …She does seem to ignore me… But that might be because she is tired… or maybe she is simply concentrating on her movie… I tried to read her frowning face, But it’s simply too familiar I failed to catch her feelings there, perhaps she’ll fan them to me later?