how emotions are made by lisa feldman barrett

This new view of emotions has serious implications: when judges issue lesser sentences for crimes of passion, when police officers fire at threatening suspects, or when doctors choose between one diagnosis and another, they're all, in some way, relying on the ancient assumption that emotions are hardwired into our brains and bodies. Emotions aren't universally pre-programmed in our brains and bodies rather they are psychological experiences that each of us constructs based on our unique personal history, physiology and environment.

But what if it is wrong? In How Emotions Are Made, pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett draws on the latest scientific evidence to reveal that our common-sense ideas about emotions are dramatically, even dangerously, out of date – and that we have been paying the price.

This understanding of emotion has been around since Plato. The thrill of seeing an old friend, the fear of losing someone we love – each of these sensations seems to arise automatically and uncontrollably from within us, finding expression on our faces and in our behaviour, carrying us away with the experience.

Many scientists believe that emotions come from a specific part of the brain, triggered by the world around us. When you feel anxious, angry, happy, or surprised, what's really going on inside of you? It took a subject I thought I understood and turned my understanding upside down' - Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point. Lisa Feldman Barrett has written two books, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020) and How Emotions are Made (2017), as well as hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.' How Emotions Are Made did what all great books do. Lisa’s work has over-turned this age-old model which shapes everything from our current beliefs about emotional intelligence to facial recognition software widely being deployed around the world. Since the ancient philosophers, and into our last century of scientific endeavor, emotions have been seen as hard-wired responses to external stimuli, located in specific regions of the brain. University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, and Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain and Behaviour at Harvard, Lisa Feldman Barrett, is profoundly changing our understanding of the brain and in particular, our emotions. This episode is part one of a two part conversation that Jean and Scott had with neuroscientist, Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett.

How emotions are made by lisa feldman barrett