Instead of having to remember every encounter you’ve ever had with a “chair,” for example, your brain stores a concept of a chair. A concept is like a compressed version of hundreds or thousands of past experiences. If it can match the current experience with a past memory, it can save a lot of time and energy.īut it would take too long for it to consider thousands of old memories, one at a time. One of the easiest ways for it to do that is to use past experience as a guide. In this way, the brain is constantly trying to make sense of the data it is receiving.
It’s sitting there in your skull, receiving all sorts of data from your eyes, ears, nose, skin, and mouth. The Theory of Constructed Emotion takes its name from its central premise: that emotions are concepts that are constructed by the brain.Ĭonsider your brain for a moment. Any mistakes or misinterpretations are mine. Assume everything below is directly taken or paraphrased from the book, although I’ve tried to explain it in my own words. In this article, I’ll summarize the main ideas from the book to help them spread as far and wide as possible. Barrett and her team at the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University have poked and prodded the faces, bodies, and brains of thousands of subjects, trying to unlock the secrets of the emotional brain. Emotions are not “reactions” to external events.There are no distinct parts of the brain dedicated to specific emotions (such as the amygdala for fear).There are no “universal” emotions across people, nations, or cultures.Emotions cannot be detected through facial expressions or any other physiological measurement.
Emotions are not hard-wired in an ancient, “reptilian” part of the brain.Lisa Feldman Barrett in her best-selling book How Emotions Are Made ( affiliate link), it also contradicts many of our most firmly held ideas about how human emotions work. Presented by psychology professor and neuroscientist Dr. The Theory of Constructed Emotion offers a radical new take on what emotions are, where they come from, and how they shape our lives.
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