What will I learn about: why the classical view of hardwired emotions is flawed, and learn how your brain actually constructs feelings based on bodily sensations and your present environment?

Discover why the classical view of hardwired emotions is flawed, and learn how your brain actually constructs feelings based on bodily sensations and your present environment.

What will I learn about: how your brain simulates emotional responses by instantly recalling past sensory memories and experiences to give meaning to your current situation?

Understand how your brain simulates emotional responses by instantly recalling past sensory memories and experiences to give meaning to your current situation.

What will I learn about: Learn why facial expressions are not universally reliable indicators of feelings, and discover why context and full body language are essential to truly understand an emotion?

Learn why facial expressions are not universally reliable indicators of feelings, and discover why context and full body language are essential to truly understand an emotion.

What will I learn about: how your brain uses distinct concepts and categories to process new situations, revealing exactly why different people react to the same emotions in vastly varying ways?

Find out how your brain uses distinct concepts and categories to process new situations, revealing exactly why different people react to the same emotions in vastly varying ways.

What will I learn about: Realize how deeply social realities and shared cultural rules shape your emotional creations, even influencing physical functions like how your body metabolizes food?

Realize how deeply social realities and shared cultural rules shape your emotional creations, even influencing physical functions like how your body metabolizes food.

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How Emotions Are Made

The Secret Life of the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett

★ 4.1 / 5(451 ratings)

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Sex & Relationships Psychology

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💡Have you ever wondered why we think emotions are reactions to the world, when they are actually predictions your brain makes based on your past?
💡What if you could gain more control over your feelings by uncovering the secret way your brain constructs emotions like stress, fear, and joy?
💡Did you know that your culture and the language you speak might be the real reason you feel certain emotions while people in other parts of the world don't?

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Key Takeaways from How Emotions Are Made

✓Discover why the classical view of hardwired emotions is flawed, and learn how your brain actually constructs feelings based on bodily sensations and your present environment.
✓Understand how your brain simulates emotional responses by instantly recalling past sensory memories and experiences to give meaning to your current situation.
✓Learn why facial expressions are not universally reliable indicators of feelings, and discover why context and full body language are essential to truly understand an emotion.
✓Find out how your brain uses distinct concepts and categories to process new situations, revealing exactly why different people react to the same emotions in vastly varying ways.
✓Realize how deeply social realities and shared cultural rules shape your emotional creations, even influencing physical functions like how your body metabolizes food.

Learning Tools

Reinforce what you learned from How Emotions Are Made

Mind Map

How Emotions Are Made

The Classical View (False Paradigm)+

Scientific Reality+

Theory of Constructed Emotion+

Interoception & Affects+

The Body Budget+

Cultural Construction+

Learning & Regulating+

Quiz — Test Your Understanding

Question 1 of 8

According to the 'classical view' of emotions, how are emotions primarily understood?

A. As culturally constructed concepts learned from birth.
B. As hardwired, universal reflexes with specific underlying properties.
C. As spontaneous creations based on the brain's predictive systems.
D. As social realities similar to the abstract value of paper money.

Question 2 of 8

What did the author's neuroscientific research reveal about the relationship between specific emotions and brain regions?

A. Each distinct emotion corresponds to a specific, dedicated region of the brain.
B. Brain regions dedicated to emotions are completely inactive during non-emotional thoughts.
C. There is no single brain region dedicated solely to any specific emotion or to emotion alone.
D. The brain relies on pre-wired 'sadness neurons' and 'anger neurons' to trigger physical responses.

Question 3 of 8

How does the author compare the 'theory of constructed emotion' to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution?

A. Just as evolution is driven by survival, emotions are driven by the need to escape danger.
B. Just as Darwin proved species have fixed biological essences, the author proves emotions have fixed neurological essences.
C. Just as Darwin showed species are populations of varying individuals rather than fixed essences, emotions are varied constructions rather than innate, fixed responses.
D. Just as evolution takes millions of years, the human brain takes a lifetime to fully develop a single emotion.

Question 4 of 8

In the context of emotion creation, what are 'affects'?

A. Innate aspects of consciousness experienced on spectrums of pleasure/displeasure and agitation/calmness.
B. Culturally learned facial expressions that communicate our internal states to others.
C. The specific physical responses, such as a scowl or crying, triggered by 'emotion neurons.'
D. Social agreements that infuse certain behaviors with cultural meaning.

Question 5 of 8

According to the text, what often happens when your 'body budget' becomes unbalanced due to a lack of resources?

A. Your primary interoceptive cortex shuts down completely to conserve energy.
B. You may experience an agitated affect, which your brain then tries to explain by constructing an emotion like fear.
C. Your brain automatically triggers a hardwired reflex to consume glucose and cortisol.
D. You immediately lose the ability to recognize cultural emotion concepts.

Question 6 of 8

Why does the author use the example of the Tahitian language lacking a word for 'sadness'?

A. To prove that people in different climates experience different biological affects.
B. To demonstrate that without a specific word, humans cannot feel the affect of displeasure.
C. To illustrate that emotion concepts are culturally constructed and shape how we understand our internal states.
D. To argue that Western psychology is superior in identifying essential human emotions.

Question 7 of 8

What is the primary benefit of learning new emotion concepts, such as the German word 'Schadenfreude'?

A. It allows us to replace our innate, hardwired emotions with more sophisticated cultural ones.
B. It helps us better distinguish between emotions, making it easier to identify and regulate our feelings.
C. It prevents our body budget from expending excess energy on negative affects.
D. It proves that all human cultures eventually converge on the exact same set of universal emotions.

Question 8 of 8

Based on the book's actionable advice, what is a recommended way to deal with feeling depressed?

A. Analyze the cultural root of the depression to deconstruct the social reality.
B. Take a nap or go for a walk to help rebalance your body budget.
C. Practice smiling in front of a mirror to manually trigger 'happiness neurons.'
D. Ignore the feeling until your interoceptive network naturally resets on its own.

How Emotions Are Made — Full Chapter Overview

1Recommendation
21 — The dominant classical view sees emotions as hardwired in our brains.
32 — Scientific evidence doesn’t back the classical view of emotion, yet research money is still spent on it.
43 — Emotions are created in the moment, all at once, and shaped by personal experience.
54 — We use a predictive system for everything happening in the body, including emotions.
65 — Interoception manages our body budget, deciding how bodily resources are used.
76 — Emotion concepts are culturally shaped beliefs about feelings.
87 — We learn culture-based emotion concepts from birth, but we can expand them.
98 — Final summary

How Emotions Are Made Summary & Overview

How Emotions Are Made (2017) challenges everything you think you know about emotions. From learning how our brain registers anger, fear and joy to how we think about these emotions culturally, you’ll come away with a new understanding of the ways in which emotions are created and how their scope is determined by society at large.

Who Should Listen to How Emotions Are Made?

People interested in psychology and neuroscience
Those who want to better understand and control their emotions
Students of cultural studies and languages

About the Author: Lisa Feldman Barrett

Lisa Feldman Barrett is University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She had also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Barrett received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her research on emotions in the brain and has published over 200 peer-reviewed, scientific papers that have appeared in Science, Nature, Neuroscience and other top psychology and cognitive neuroscience journals.