How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett (PDF)

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“Fascinating . . . A thought-provoking journey into emotion science.” — Wall Street Journal “A singular book, remarkable for the freshness of its ideas and the boldness and clarity with which they are presented.” — Scientific American “A brilliant and original book on the science of emotion, by the deepest thinker about this topic since Darwin.” — Daniel Gilbert, best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture. A lucid report from the cutting edge of emotion science, How Emotions Are Made reveals the profound real-world consequences of this breakthrough for everything from neuroscience and medicine to the legal system and even national security, laying bare the immense implications of our latest and most intimate scientific revolution. “Mind-blowing.” — Elle “Chock-full of startling, science-backed findings . . . An entertaining and engaging read. ” — Forbes

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book is about emotions, but, the setup work of describing how the brain works was more interesting to me. I love the idea that we Experience our Constructed Model of the World as Reality. The other big ideas are: Constructed Emotions, Body Budgeting, Affective Realism, Social Reality (as a Super Power), and the Interoceptive System. There is a lot to unpack here. And, there are a few nits, too. Some of this is my spin on what the book says.Since my lens is Consciousness, the idea of the Model as Reality is the key to the book FOR ME. This ia a fragment of text that needs a lot of set-up. And the set-up needs set-up, too. So, the set-up and this text are repeated near the end. Obviously, the book leads you into this gently.p287: “From these three inevitabilities of the mind, we see that construction teaches us to be skeptical. Your experiences are not a window into reality. Rather, your brain is wired to model your world, driven by what is relevant for your body budget, and then you experience that model as Reality…”Also, very current about unlearning implicit bias, aka, Training the Elephant: “It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions.”Barrett goes into a lot of detail on a set of concepts that all have to do with modelling Reality. They are: Concepts (the model), Simulation (running the model), Prediction (using the model), Error Correction (tweaking the current categorization and/or the Concept). [jch] Our mental model is a “deep learning” model and categorization similar is “inference” in deep learning lingo, except deep learning does not have the simultaneous predictions…Prediction: (See Also: Clark’s Surfing Uncertaintity)p59: “Though prediction, your brain constructs the world you experience. It combines bits and pieces of your past and estimates how likely each bit applies in you current situation.”p62 “Through prediction and correction, your brain continually creates and revises your mental model of the world. It’s a huge ongoing simulation that constructs everything you perceive while determining how you act…”p64 “When prediction errors occur there are two general options:” 1) change prediction or 2) filter sensory input to match prediction (Affective Realism, aka, implicit bias)I’d add 3) Throw the prediction error to consciousness. Perhaps that would be considered “Experiential Blindness”.Barrett’s Concepts are VERY SIMILAR to Bor’s. Chunking. The “bits and pieces” packaged up into easily retrievable bundles.p29: “Every moment that you are alive, your brain uses concepts to simulate the outside world. Without concepts, you are experientially blind, as you were with the [ visual anomaly ] . With concepts, your brain simulates so invisibly and automatically that vision, hearing, and your other senses seem like reflexes rather than constructions.”Constructed Emotions: emotions are concepts and the finer the granularity of your concepts, the easier it is to feel what you’re feeling. It is more efficient.p67: “Usually, you experience interception only in general terms: those simple feelings of pleasure, displeasure, arousal, or calmness [mentioned earlier] Sometimes, however, you experience moments of intense interoceptive sensations as emotions. That is a key element of the theory of constructed emotion.In every waking moment, your brain gives your sensations meaning. Some of those sensations are interoceptive sensations, and the resulting meaning can be an instance of an emotion.”p35: “The theory of constructed emotion incorporates elements of all three flavors of construction. From social construction, it acknowledges the importance of culture and concepts. From psychological construction, it considers emotions to be constructed by core systems in the brain and body. And from neuroconstuction, it adopts the idea that experience wires the brain.”Barrett spent the early part of her PhD work trying to detect the “signatures of emotions” for the universal emotions, which was and still is the commonly accepted view. She could not find them. Instead, she started thinking in terms of population thinking. Each instance of anger is unique, based on habit and circumstance.On p 138, Emotions are 1) to make meaning – to understand one’s state is more efficient, 2) prescribe action, 3) regulate your body budget to prepare for said action. These 3 are about you. Two other functions: emotional communication and social influence.Social Realityp134. “Emotions become real to us through two human capabilities that are prerequisites for Social Reality. First, you need a group a people to agree that a concept exists, such as “Flower” or “Cash” or “Happiness”. This shared knowledge is called collective intentionality. Most people barely think about collective intentionality, but it nevertheless is a foundation of every society. Even your own name is made real through collective intentionality.”p135. “Collective intentionality is necessary for social reality but not sufficient. Certain non-human animals are capable of a rudimentary form of collective intentionality without social reality. Ants work together toward a common activity, as do bees. … Humans are unique, however, because our collective intentionality involves mental concepts. We can look at a hammer, a chainsaw, and an ice pick and categorize them all as “Tools,” then change our minds and categorize them all as “Murder Weapons” We can impose functions that would not otherwise exist, thereby inventing reality. We can work this magic because we have the second prerequisite for social reality: language. No other animals have collective intentionality combined with words.”Body BudgetBody Budget is a term that is purposefully vague, but it works. Your brain minimizes the amount of energy it expends. It can refer to body budgeting regions, metabolism, psychological well being. The lab just published: Evidence for a large-scale brain system supporting allostasis and interoception in humans_ in Nature, Human Behavior. Ian R. Kleckner.p200: Your body budget fluctuates normally throughout the day, as your brain anticipates your body’s needs and shifts around your budgetary resources like oxygen, glucose, salt, and water. When you digest food, your stomach and intestines “borrow” resources from your muscles. When you run, your muscles borrow from your liver and kidneys. During these transfers, your budget remains solvent.Affective RealismAffective Realism is a step past implicit bias. The Reality we see/hear is shaped by our affect.p79: “You might believe that you are a rational creature, weighing the pros and cons before deciding how to act, but the structure of your cortex makes this an implausible fiction. Your brain is wired to listen to your body budget. Affect is in the driver’s seat and rationality is a passenger. It doesn’t matter whether you’re choosing between two snacks, two job offers, two investments, or two heart surgeons your everyday decisions are driven by a loudmouthed, mostly deaf scientist who views the world through affect-colored glasses.”InteroceptionExteroception are the senses vision, hearing, etc. Interoception senses our internal state.p73: “Interoception is a fundamental feature of the human nervous system, and why you experience these sensations as affect is one of the great mysteries of science. Interoception did not evolve for you to have feelings but to regulate your body budget. It helps your brain track your temperature, how much glucose you are using, whether you have any tissue damage, whether your heart is pounding, whether your muscles are stretching, and other bodily conditions, all at the same time. Your affective feelings of pleasure and displeasure, and calmness and agitation, are simple summaries of your budgetary state. Are you flush?Are you overdrawn?Do you need a deposit, and if so, how desperately?Experiencing our Constructed Model of the World as RealityNow, hopefully this makes sense. Perhaps, as my wife says, this is obvious to everyone, but, to me, it’s a great model for consciousness.p283: “Affective Realism, the phenomenon that you experience what you believe, is inevitable because of your wiring. The body budgeting regions … are the most powerful predictors in your brain, and your primary sensory regions are eager listeners. Body budget predictions are laden with affect, not logic and reason, are the main drivers of your experience and behavior.”p284: “Affective Realism is an inevitability, yet you are not helpless against it. The best defense against it is curiosity…””The second inevitability of the mind is that you have concepts, because the human brain is wired to construct a conceptual system.””The third inevitability of the mind is social reality.” … The social world becomes real.p287: “From these three inevitabilities of the mind, we see that construction teaches us to be skeptical. Your experiences are not a window into reality. Rather, your brain is wired to model your world, driven by what is relevant for your body budget, and then you experience that model as Reality…”We are responsible for our actions. Sure, your brain made you do it, but, “It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions.” We all need to “Train the Elephant” in Haidt’s rider and the elephant metaphor.p155 “If you grow up in a society full of anger or hate, you can’t be blamed for having the associated concepts, but as an adult, you can choose to educate yourself and learn additional concepts. It’s certainly not an easy task, but it is doable. This is another basis for my frequent claim, “You are an architect of your experience?” You are indeed partly responsible for your actions, even so-called emotional reactions that you experience as out of your control. It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions. You also bear some responsibility for others, because your actions shape other people’s concepts and behaviors, creating the environment that turns genes on and off to wire their brains, including the brains of the next generation. Social reality implies that we are all partly responsible for one another’s behavior, not in a fluffy, let’s-all-blame-society sort of way, but a very real brain-wiring way.”Nits.Granted, I am not the target for this book. I have read a lot of books and papers on Consciousness. This book is aimed at a much wider audience and I hope it does really well. For the most part, Barrett does a good job balancing between abstraction and complexity and dumbing the subject down. One example of dumbing it down too much is when she discusses to Damasio and the loss of a specific brain region at that point, just name the orbitofrontal context.1) Terminology – intrinsic networks (p58), which is way too vague. The term Intrinsic Brain Network get 1.5M gaggle hits, while Large Scale Brain Networks (LSBN) gets 9.7M hits. Why not use the more decriptive and more widely used term?Another example, Theory of Mind is the widely used term for figuring out intentions, beliefs, etc of other people. She uses mental inference. If you are going to use a different term, use a more explicit term.Interception system would be better than interoception network. If the default mode Network is a part of it and the brain network concept is well established, don’t add another layer of networks. No mention of Vagus Nerve..Barrett refers to brain regions as if they were homogeneous “brain blobs”. If all nodes in a network are homogeneous, then the intelligence would live in the routing tables, and downplaining the regions would be fine. HOWEVER, cytoarchitecture makes it clear that the different nodes have different processing capabilites. So the brain regions are as important as the network topology and they should be identified if it is relevant.Universal Emotionsp173: So when the classical view [ of emotions ] reasserted itself in the 1960s, half a century of anti-essentialist research was swept into history’s dustbin. And we are all the poorer for it, considering how much time and money are being wasted today in pursuit of illusory emotion essences. At press time, Microsoft is analyzing facial photographs in an attempt to recognize emotion. Apple has recently purchased Emollient. . . Google . . .”What? If emotions are not essences, not purely physiological, then it is a waste of time to detect them? Since language is learned, is it a waste of time to do speech recognition? What if the core emotions are not inherent physiologically, but, they are nearly universal because part of the Social Reality so early that they are nearly universal. They are like Proto-Indo-European roots.Another nit, she uses “scientists say” too much, as if everyone agrees with her.Nerdly nit: p129 “We only experience red when light of 600 nanometers reflects off of an object”. If you are reading a screen and there is red on it, that is being emitted, not reflected.So, if you are well read in neuroscience, it may be a little distracting in some places, but, it was a lot of new material for me and SO worthwhile!!!

⭐A few caveats before I begin the review proper – I take writing a negative review very seriously and understand full well that online actions have consequences. I also understand that the author is a far more accomplished, successful, intelligent, well-read and many other positive things, person that I will ever be. However, even brilliant people can be misguided. I know personally people have PhDs in the most rigorous scientific fields from the world’s best universities who are nonetheless misguided, I believe, on various issues. I especially see this on what I’ll characterize as the nature vs. nurture issue of the human mind.I read this book back in March of 2017, and refrained from writing this review because generally I’m uncomfortable with writing them. However, about an hour before writing this, I listened science writer Robert Wright’s podcast of the author discussing her book and was so bothered by it that I felt compelled to write the review you’re reading now.Dr. Barrett discusses this book, and I personally found the discussion disingenuous at best, and intellectually dodgy at worst. Dr. Barrett, to me, sounded more like an attorney than she did a scientist. She nitpicked the meaning of Mr. Wright’s choice of words, and if you nitpick enough, you can find a flaw in anything, then focus on it ad nauseam. She absolutely dominated the discourse with what I perceived to be a veritable flood of verbiage, while avoiding a truly honest debate on the issues with Mr. Wright, as he clearly disagreed with her.Let’s take for instance the point that Mr. Wright brought up about schadenfreude, which Dr. Barrett discusses in her book. Wright implied this is an instinctive emotion, Dr. Barrett claims this is a culturally constructed emotion, as are all emotions. Schadenfreude is a German word denoting the pleasure that someone feels at the misfortune of others. Can a three year old experience this, Mr. Wright asked. Dr. Barrett made a somewhat snarky remark to Mr. Wright saying that maybe YOU feel schadenfreude a lot, but most of us don’t. Then went on to discuss that the three year old would not feel this because they haven’t been taught, or learned the concept of it. Ultimately, this is as most questions in psychology, an academic question because we can’t prove anything about subjective experience. However, can any of us honestly say that we’ve never seen a three year old who has no idea what shadenfreude is, experience it anyway? Haven’t YOU felt it at some time, even though you many have never heard the word?Here’s another thing I didn’t like in the book – Dr. Barrett joking referred to “brain blobs”, as she pokes fun at the notion that the brain has specified locations for various functions. If I understand her point correctly, this would directly contradict eminent scientists Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s view of the brain, which is greatly divided by function, and has much experimental evidence to back up his claims in his book “Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst”, which I personally find a far superior book to this one. Here’s a statement from “Behave” which directly contradicts the fundamental premise of Dr. Barrett’s book – “by the time you finish this book, you’ll see that it actually makes no sense to distinguish between aspects of a behavior that are “Biological” and those that would be described as, say, “psychological” or “cultural.” Utterly intertwined. I think Dr. Sopolsky would agree that you could replace the word “behvaior” with “emotion” and still agree with him.The author had the temerity to take a veiled swipe at fellow psychologist, Daniel Kahneman. Not directly, mind you, but it was an unmistakable negative remark towards him. Dr. Kahneman is the only psychologist to win a Nobel Prize; he won it with his contribution to economics on the psychology of decision making in uncertain circumstances. In his masterwork of psychology “Thinking Fast and Slow” he summarizes his decades of research on human psychology by postulating that we have two different thinking systems, one rapid and intuitive, the other slow and deliberate. Dr. Barrett completely denied the existence of this distinction, in language I found similar to poking fun at “brain blobs.” I admire a writer who has grand ambitions, however, taking a shot at perhaps the most accomplished living psychologist, and missing the mark entirely, further solidified my inability to construct much positive emotion of this book.Ultimately, Dr. Barrett is trying to convince the reader that there are no universal emotions, as say psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman and others would have us believe, and that they are all dependent upon learning and culture. Now this view may auger well with our current intellectual zeitgeist, which is averse to the notion of human nature, and believes that most human ills can be mended by being educated in the right ideas. While I believe this in part, I do not believe this entirely. Why can’t it be that there are emotions engraved on our DNA and our experience from birth to death interacts with our nature?Wright and Barrett also discussed indigenous cultures, who are very often discussed in psychological texts because they don’t have any of the influence of modern western cultures, and live in a way that humans are more evolved to live in. Dr. Barrett says that for instance, the !Kung simply do not feel fear in the way that you or I would because of their culture. So, if a !Kung saw within stepping on distance of themselves a coiled, ready to strike deadly snake, they wouldn’t feel what any other human would feel? I highly doubt that.Dr. Barrett resides in academia’s ivory tower – me, I’m a mud-spattered grunt in the trenches of trying to heal people’s painful emotions. I was hoping for cutting edge insights from the Ivory Tower to help us emotional hygienists in the world below. I found woefully little, unfortunately. I see countless people ruled, tormented and sometimes ruined by their painful, negative emotions. If I summarized this book to your clients – “well, those emotions are just constructs that you learned and you create, so just change them!”, I think I’d be out of a job. Our emotions are just not that simple. Not even close.Perhaps I misunderstood the book. I was hoping that the podcast would convince me of Dr. Barrett’s way of thinking. It didn’t. It actually secured my own existing beliefs, partly because I found her so overbearingly loquacious, without really saying much of anything with substance. Mostly a big disappointing word salad.On a more positive note, I really liked her discussion about the concept of emotion differentiation and emotional granularity, and found them extremely helpful to my job as a mental health therapist. I now have lists of words for emotions that I have clients read through to help them better identify feelings that cause them trouble, or feelings of things that they find pleasurable. It’s been very helpful, so I’m thankful for that.In closing, I’m a grizzled old veteran of the internet, and anticipate this review may provoke some reader’s ire. I won’t respond to anything argumentative, snarky, or hostile. I may not respond at all, it depends upon my mood. If there is something I’m misunderstanding, I really would like some enlightening. In short, I simply don’t believe the premise of this book, that emotions are predominately cultural constructs. Yes, this is what the book ultimately argues. Instead, emotions are a product of both our natures and our experience. Thank you for reading.

⭐In my generation, we are well aware of the importance of the mind, but Barret is selling this idea to the extreme.For her, there is no reaction, no sensory channel reception, no awareness of sensory input. Everything is prediction, even an unexpected smell. It takes her to page 64 to accept less minded sensory input reception processes, and such acknowledgement bears almost no echo in her writings. She denies cause effect and fails to see that she is putting the prediction and the mind as the cause (of everything). This is the new descartian generation of Western intellectuals with little experiential sensorial training. For me, it is sort of a stretch to see sensory reception (which of course involves the nervous system, and may be tainted eventually by simulation and ‘illusion’) as prediction, and self-awareness as prediction.In brief, her brain is, as she says, locked in her skull. My brain is a sensorial organism permanently in inter-relation with everything else, being changed and changing.(on the upside, despite her bias and her crusade against Ekman tainting her reasoning, she is well acquainted with the literature)

⭐I have to give this book 5 stars based on its audacity and ambition alone.The author fearlessly challenges some of the fields (affective psychology/neuroscience) most revered and respected theorists and researchers, including Jack Panksap, Antonio Damassio, Joseph LeDoux, Paul Ekman and even Charles Darwin.That’s mad ballsy.The book is a virtual slaughterhouse of sacred cows.I have reservations about much of the authors assertions. It’s hard not to, because she challenges so much of the current gospel.That being said, I have the strong intuition that the this work represents a legitimate challenge to the old paradigm.It will be interesting to read the inevitable pushback.

⭐I thoroughly enjoyed this very well written book. Her writing style is quite easy to read although she is introducing some very difficult and challenging concepts. As an avid, though lay, reader of books on neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, her explanations in this book upend everything I thought I knew about the brain and the mind. There is some repetition, but personally I found this to be helpful because the book feels like the construction of a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, so having some ideas repeated helps to orient you to how things fit together.Definitely not a one time read and then put it aside. If you are interested in this topic, then in my view, this is one of the best books available and for that reason I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

⭐A very interesting look into how Lisa currently believes our brains create our emotions. Lisa pushes well against the tide of established beliefs and makes a fairly good case for her theories.But, we’ll probably throw this one on the “scrap-head-of-wild-scientific-ideas-that-came-and-went” in a few years time, along with all the other thoughts that currently suit the zeitgeist.Interesting though.

⭐This is not an easy book to read. Several times I considered giving up, but I really wanted to understand the subject so I continued. And I am glad I did, the second half of the book was not only illuminating, but also truly interesting. There were many fascinating examples of studies and case histories, a very enlightening insight into criminal law (both in the US and the UK) concerning unconscious actions, and an insight into suggestions that animals might experience emotions.As I intimated earlier, the first half of the book was very hard work. Admittedly some of the concepts are very complex and hard to grasp. I felt that the author was determined to drive home every detail of her considerable research into the roles of prediction and prediction error in the formation of our emotions in order to thoroughly dismantle the long-held classical view of “essential” emotions generated by specific regions of the brain. This is completely understandable since developing a prediction theory of the brain’s function has clearly been a major part of her professional career.And this book is very convincing of her theories. The author is talented, articulate and dedicated and this book is probably one of the most thorough modern analyses of how emotions are created. It is definitely worth devoting time to several readings.

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