But there has always been a theory that some kind of omnipotence made us animals and also gave us the means to control that inner beast. In Plato’s time, our animal nature was thought to be given to us, literally, by nature. The theory that humans are animals who need rational abilities to keep our animal nature in check has been with us since ancient Greeks and Egyptians starting writing about the brain, the body, and the nature of the human mind. We have a particular theory of human nature, the idea that each of us has an inner beast that is wrapped in rationality. Does that perpetuate the misunderstanding of how emotions work? There appears to be a social pressure to know exactly what you’re feeling and why you feel it. 'How Emotions Are Made' by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

There’s one example in my book where a psychologist explains how misreading emotion across cultural boundaries was the tipping point that started a war. It matters because of how the government spends its money, it matters to the health and wellbeing of people, it matters how we raise our kids, how we treat mental illness. We get that science is the process of trying to understand the world around, the world inside you.īut when I really started to think about it, I realized that, actually, getting the theory of emotion wrong matters a lot. I was tempted to say, “It’s important to understand how the brain works.” We don’t ask people why it’s important to understand whether the Higgs-Boson exists. The editor kept asking why it matters if people assume the wrong theory of emotions. In 2013, I was interviewed for a feature article in Boston Magazine. How did you come to decide to turn your research into a book?

Barrett argues that emotions aren’t rigid and hardwired, but instead constructed concepts.īarrett spoke with Inverse about her book, how it contradicts classical scientific thought, and what it means for the future. Barrett found, however, that this wasn’t a universal fact: Sometimes, people felt anxious, other times depressed, and many times, people couldn’t distinguish between anxiety and depression.īarrett was fascinated by our individual experiences of emotion, and years later it became the basis of her most recent book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. When neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett was in graduate school, she spent three years attempting to replicate long-heralded findings on self-esteem that suggested people compared themselves to an idealized version when they came up short, they were depressed.

Lisa barrett how emotions are made