Our brain constantly predicts what’s about to happen, and emotions result from these predictions. This helps our brain respond to the world efficiently and proactively rather than reactively. 	“Your brain predicts what you will feel before it happens, based on past experience.”

Role of Prediction in Emotions

Your emotions help regulate your body budget, which refers to managing energy in the body. Stress or happiness can change how your body allocates its resources, impacting health. 	“Emotions are your brain’s best guesses at regulating your body’s energy resources.”

Emotions and the Body Budget

The meaning of any emotional experience is highly dependent on context. The same physical sensations can lead to different emotional labels depending on where you are and who you’re with. 	“Your brain doesn’t sense emotion from the world; it creates emotion by interpreting your surroundings.”

Importance of Context

We’re not hard-wired to react in certain ways. Because emotions are constructed, we have flexibility in how we respond emotionally to different situations. 	“You are not at the mercy of your emotions. You can shape them, and that means you have control.”

Flexibility of Emotional Response

Understanding how emotions are constructed helps improve emotional intelligence. By identifying emotional triggers and reframing situations, we can respond more thoughtfully and effectively. 	“The more you understand how your brain constructs emotions, the better you can manage them.”

Applying Emotional Intelligence

Emotions are not built into your brain from birth. They are just guesses, waiting to happen.

Emotions are socially constructed, meaning their meaning often depends on shared societal agreements. People learn what to feel based on social cues and collective understanding. 	“We co-create our emotions with others, in real-time, based on social and cultural rules.”

Social Reality of Emotions

By changing the way we interpret and label our feelings, we can change the emotion we experience. Cognitive reframing helps transform negative emotions into more constructive ones. 	“Change your predictions, and you can change your emotions.”

Reframing Emotional Experiences

Cultural differences shape how we experience and express emotions. What is considered a typical emotional response in one culture may be interpreted entirely differently in another. 	“Culture teaches your brain how to make emotions.”

Emotional Concepts Shaped by Culture

Words play a powerful role in shaping our emotional experiences. Labeling emotions can influence how you feel, making language a tool for regulating emotions. 	“When you put a name to your emotion, you change your experience of it.”

Power of Words in Shaping Emotions

Contrary to the popular idea of a “reptilian brain” controlling emotions, Barrett argues that emotions arise from the same parts of the brain that handle rational thought and planning. 	“There is no ancient part of the brain that makes emotions; all of your brain is involved in emotion.”

Myth of the Emotional Brain

Core affect refers to a simple feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness combined with arousal. It’s the raw material that the brain uses to construct more complex emotional experiences. 	“Core affect is your baseline mood that your brain layers emotions on top of.”

Role of Core Affect

Emotions deeply influence our decision-making processes. Even decisions that seem rational are influenced by how we feel at any given moment. 	“Your emotions are part of every decision, whether you’re aware of it or not.”

Impact of Emotion on Decision-making

Interoception, or sensing what’s happening inside your body, plays a major role in emotion. Emotions often arise from your brain’s interpretation of bodily sensations. 	“Your brain reads sensations from your body and tries to make sense of them. That’s how emotions are born.”

Role of Interoception

Because emotions are constructed, you can train your brain to experience emotions differently. Neuroplasticity allows the brain to form new pathways that reshape how emotions are felt and expressed. 	“Your brain’s wiring can be reshaped by how you construct emotions over time.”

Emotions & Neuroplasticity

8.	Interoception Drives Emotion: Sensing bodily changes leads to emotional interpretation.	9.	Emotions Are Socially Constructed: Collective agreements dictate emotional norms.	10.	Language Shapes Emotion: The words we use influence our emotional experiences.	11.	Reframe to Regulate: Changing how we interpret feelings alters our emotional state.	12.	Train Your Brain: Emotions can be reshaped over time via neuroplasticity.	13.	Core Affect: The raw base of emotions comes from pleasantness/unpleasantness and arousal.	14.	Emotions Guide Decisions: Emotions impact every decision-making process.

1.	Emotions Are Constructed: We create emotions based on past experiences and predictions.	2.	Emotional Granularity Matters: More specific emotion labels lead to better emotional control.	3.	Predictions Shape Feelings: Emotions stem from the brain predicting outcomes, not reacting.	4.	Context Is Crucial: Emotional meaning varies with context and surroundings.	5.	Culture Shapes Emotion: Cultural influences determine how we express and experience emotions.	6.	No “Emotional Brain”: All parts of the brain contribute to emotions.	7.	Body Budget: Emotions help regulate the body’s energy resources.

1.	The Theory of Constructed Emotion	2.	Emotional Granularity	3.	The Role of Prediction in Emotions	4.	The Importance of Context	5.	Emotional Concepts Shaped by Culture	6.	The Myth of the Emotional Brain	7.	Emotions and the Body Budget	8.	The Role of Interoception	9.	The Social Reality of Emotions	10.	The Power of Words in Shaping Emotion	11.	Reframing Emotional Experiences	12.	Emotions and Neuroplasticity	13.	The Role of Core Affect	14.	The Impact of Emotion on Decision-Making	15.	The Flexibility of Emotional Responses	16.	Applying Emotional Intelligence

Topics Explained

Lisa Barrett argues that emotions aren’t hard-wired or universal. They are constructed based on our brain’s predictions and past experiences. We “create” emotions as we interpret the world. 	“Emotions are not built into your brain from birth. They are just guesses, waiting to happen.”

Theory of Constructed Emotion

Barrett emphasizes the importance of understanding and labeling emotions with precision, called emotional granularity. The more specific your emotional vocabulary, the better you handle complex emotional states. 	“The more precisely you can describe your emotions, the more control you have over them.”

Emotional Granularity

Discover how emotions are created, shaped, and controlled in ways you never imagined!

Preeminent psychologist Lisa Barrett lays out how the brain constructs emotions in a way that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind. “Fascinating . . . A thought-provoking journey into emotion science.”—The 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.

Theory of Constructed Emotion

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