A family group closely associated with the Graduate Division  is well-represented in the trust-themed Fall ’08 issue of Greater Good, in a feature called “Can I Trust You?”. It’s a conversation with daughter and father Eve and Paul Ekman, conducted by GG editor-in-chief Jason Marsh, on trusting your kids, encouraging trustworthy behavior, and building trust between parents and children.  Eve and Jason are both Berkeley grad alums, she from social welfare (M.A. ‘06) and he from journalism (M.J. ‘05). (Ekman is a product of the University of Chicago, New York University, and Adelphi University.)

The magazine’s caption for the image above asks, in part, “What’s it like to be raised by a leading expert on trust and deception? Psychologist Paul Ekman and his wife Mary Ann Mason have extended a great deal of trust to their now-28-year-old daughter, Eve.”  The photo is by Mason, Ekman’s wife and Eve’s mother,  a social welfare professor and former dean of the Graduate Division (2000 – 2007) who now co-directs the Berkeley Center on Health, Economic, and Family Security.

Paul and Eve Ekman
Paul and Eve Ekman

The reader gets to know Eve and Paul fairly well in these pages.  Eve, “not your conventional good girl,” says her parents weren’t just authority figures; they would explain.  “It wasn’t like, ‘Because I said so.’”  That, she said, helped build trust.  “I always felt like, even in the worst-case scenarios, they would be the first people I would call.  Still, to this day, I call them first when I have trouble.”  Paul’s line, at that point in the conversation, was “I remember the call from jail.”

(Originally published in eGrad, December 2008)