How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain—How We Create Emotions Through Brain, Body, and Culture
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 groundbreaking brain science 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, this compelling work of popular psychology 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.
This paradigm-shifting book reveals:
- A New Theory of Emotion: Learn why emotions aren’t reactions that are hardwired into your brain, but are instead constructed in the moment through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.
- Cutting-Edge Neuroscience: Go beyond long-standing beliefs with the psychologist and neuroscientist leading a revolution in emotion science comparable to the discovery of natural selection.
- Real-World Consequences: Understand the profound implications this breakthrough has for everything from health care and medicine to the legal system and our understanding of the human mind.
- The Mind and Brain Connection: Explore a lucid report from the forefront of psychology that changes not only what you know about emotions, but who you think you are.
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Community Reviews
Pro
It's an extremely well-written book and a very clear audiobook. She is an amazing writer and is sure to sell books no matter how well her science stands up. The text is clear, engaging, interesting, simple and fun. She for sure could write an amazing scientific book if she wanted to. She could just present the basic science on emotions and create a book that would go down as a classic that most psychology professors would refer to. We need a simple intro to emotions! There is none out there. It would be a bestseller.
This book is not about basic theories on emotions though...
Con
Now, while the writing is good her research is less so. It's at best questionable and vague. At worst it's directly wrong and misreading. I think it fits into all 4 categories. At many times I found so many holes and questionable scientific practises in her work that I felt the whole book was a big question mark.
Her goal is to "disprove" the theory of emotions and show that emotions are just one big single feeling that we interpreted as various unique emotions by random cultural means. It's actually very hard to describe her theory because she's extremely vague about it and what it means. She spends tens of pages on explaining very little.
This is basically how she says the whole idea started and my reaction to it:
Lisa: I did 8 experiments in a row and they all failed to show a result. I thought I was a bad researcher.
Okay, I don't think she's bad researcher just because of failed experiments. You need to learn from your experience and…
Lisa: --But then I figured that if all other theories about emotions were wrong then all my 8 studies would have found an effect!
Wait… no. Don't go there. I know it's appealing but this is really not something you want to…
Lisa: --Here, I wrote a book about my pet theory! All the thousands of studies disputing me are wrong. My few studies are correct.
This is the issue here. It's not a book presenting commonly accepted science and findings on emotions. It's Lisa's own theory about emotions using a blank slate post-modernistic argument to describe how humans feel. You can take a gamble on the book and hope that maybe some of her ideas will be discovered to be true at some point. Or you can spend your time first and foremost reading a simple intro on emotions to have a better foundation for books such as this one that are about ideas not research. Books that explore alternative and crazy ideas. These books sell more because they feel like rebel books where a rebel researcher stands out and proves the world "wrong" so readers will root for Lisa and against all the strawman theories and researchers she attacks. It may be fun to read such loose assumptions but frankly I'm tired of these pop-psych books that try to reinvent the wheel by saying that most psychology is based on faulty ideas and that the human brain is a sponge with no instincts. Because 99% of such theories just fail at even building a good alternative wheel and instead build a square wheel that really won't take us anywhere.
These alternative theories are also often extremely vague so that you never really can fully disprove them. It's not even possible to test most of her claims. Of course it isn't. If it was she would know it and not include it in the book. She has to be vague to persuade by emotional appeal instead of logic.
So it's a lot of ramblings and loose theories with some very questionable "proof" at times. It's not a pseudoscience book but it's pretty much in the category of a Malcolm Gladwell book. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny and it's not following basic research.
I could go over all her bad experiments but let's look into her biggest claim by far. While she alludes to things here and there she finally presents a very clear experiment at the start:
"She was invited on a date with a guy she didn't find attractive. After the date she felt emotionally attracted to him. Then the next day she discovered that she was sick."
So her explanation now is that her being sick was one of those strong big feelings that she could just interpret in whatever way she wanted or needed and therefore her body experienced it as sexual attraction or love.
This was the very first time she tried to actually prove her emotions theory in the book after pages and pages or loose rambling and bad arguments. And it's clear to see why this book couldn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. Firstly, it's not an experiment. It's a personal experience that she luckily can interpret in any way she sees fit today. One could even argue she felt attraction AND sickness and that her post the facts explanation is wrong so her sickness didn't cause her to feel attraction. This is why usually researchers would use such anecdotes to support their research instead of as evidence by itself. She lets it stand alone. This is not hard to test or look up studies for. Did overly emotional or unknowingly sick people fall easier in love or feel attraction? Surely if this is her claim such an experiment would be HUGE news and make her famous by itself. Why just present an anecdote and then continue on to new anecdotes and studies? I didn't finish the book so maybe she gets into more details later on but it doesn't excuse the fact that the beginning of the book is close to being pseudoscience.
The other experiments and claims she had with more supporting evidence were fully unconvincing to anyone in social science. She constantly couldn't get any results in any type of study proving that unique emotions were not real. The problem is that she proves her own claims true by doing her studies as bad as possible. The worse the study design the more she proves her own main claims about all other emotions research being false. And since she started out doing 8 experiments with no findings it's not unlikely that some of her designs were worse than she makes them out to be. At any rate it's extremely easy to not get a result in psychology. It's also easy to get a result too. So she is correct in her critique of many other studies that supposedly disprove her claims.
Instead of proving her theory by not finding any universal emotions with questionable methods she should support her claim by showing that it is possible to manipulate any emotion into any other emotion. So if she can manipulate fear into attraction or hate into pleasure then we are actually seeing something interesting.
I didn't read the whole book so I can't know if the book suddenly becomes good or not. So I'm rating it a star higher for that. But since the first several hundred pages are bad science it's not a book you should read. I also don't think she is lying or completely wrong. Her theory fits a few actual experiments.
Conclusion
Pretty much not a recommended book. I like the theory for sure. I like any weird or impossible theory and like reading this stuff. But not in a full book! A small video or paper would be fine. I don't need to read a 500 page long book about how the moon landing was faked or how FBI flies UFOs over New York. Small videos on this are fun.
In such a long book about emotions I expect a basic intro to emotions and then a presentation of the main evidence. Maybe if you are an expert on emotions and want to read alternative theories you could read this book. But it's light on good evidence.
For any layman reader or non-expert on emotions this is probably a book you just want to avoid. The science is just too unimpressive here. It will likely just confuse you instead of inform you.
Her main claims are basically all wrong and misleading. And so far out that it's not a book that should be recommended to readers who may think her claims are accepted research.
It's an extremely well-written book and a very clear audiobook. She is an amazing writer and is sure to sell books no matter how well her science stands up. The text is clear, engaging, interesting, simple and fun. She for sure could write an amazing scientific book if she wanted to. She could just present the basic science on emotions and create a book that would go down as a classic that most psychology professors would refer to. We need a simple intro to emotions! There is none out there. It would be a bestseller.
This book is not about basic theories on emotions though...
Con
Now, while the writing is good her research is less so. It's at best questionable and vague. At worst it's directly wrong and misreading. I think it fits into all 4 categories. At many times I found so many holes and questionable scientific practises in her work that I felt the whole book was a big question mark.
Her goal is to "disprove" the theory of emotions and show that emotions are just one big single feeling that we interpreted as various unique emotions by random cultural means. It's actually very hard to describe her theory because she's extremely vague about it and what it means. She spends tens of pages on explaining very little.
This is basically how she says the whole idea started and my reaction to it:
Lisa: I did 8 experiments in a row and they all failed to show a result. I thought I was a bad researcher.
Okay, I don't think she's bad researcher just because of failed experiments. You need to learn from your experience and…
Lisa: --But then I figured that if all other theories about emotions were wrong then all my 8 studies would have found an effect!
Wait… no. Don't go there. I know it's appealing but this is really not something you want to…
Lisa: --Here, I wrote a book about my pet theory! All the thousands of studies disputing me are wrong. My few studies are correct.
This is the issue here. It's not a book presenting commonly accepted science and findings on emotions. It's Lisa's own theory about emotions using a blank slate post-modernistic argument to describe how humans feel. You can take a gamble on the book and hope that maybe some of her ideas will be discovered to be true at some point. Or you can spend your time first and foremost reading a simple intro on emotions to have a better foundation for books such as this one that are about ideas not research. Books that explore alternative and crazy ideas. These books sell more because they feel like rebel books where a rebel researcher stands out and proves the world "wrong" so readers will root for Lisa and against all the strawman theories and researchers she attacks. It may be fun to read such loose assumptions but frankly I'm tired of these pop-psych books that try to reinvent the wheel by saying that most psychology is based on faulty ideas and that the human brain is a sponge with no instincts. Because 99% of such theories just fail at even building a good alternative wheel and instead build a square wheel that really won't take us anywhere.
These alternative theories are also often extremely vague so that you never really can fully disprove them. It's not even possible to test most of her claims. Of course it isn't. If it was she would know it and not include it in the book. She has to be vague to persuade by emotional appeal instead of logic.
So it's a lot of ramblings and loose theories with some very questionable "proof" at times. It's not a pseudoscience book but it's pretty much in the category of a Malcolm Gladwell book. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny and it's not following basic research.
I could go over all her bad experiments but let's look into her biggest claim by far. While she alludes to things here and there she finally presents a very clear experiment at the start:
"She was invited on a date with a guy she didn't find attractive. After the date she felt emotionally attracted to him. Then the next day she discovered that she was sick."
So her explanation now is that her being sick was one of those strong big feelings that she could just interpret in whatever way she wanted or needed and therefore her body experienced it as sexual attraction or love.
This was the very first time she tried to actually prove her emotions theory in the book after pages and pages or loose rambling and bad arguments. And it's clear to see why this book couldn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. Firstly, it's not an experiment. It's a personal experience that she luckily can interpret in any way she sees fit today. One could even argue she felt attraction AND sickness and that her post the facts explanation is wrong so her sickness didn't cause her to feel attraction. This is why usually researchers would use such anecdotes to support their research instead of as evidence by itself. She lets it stand alone. This is not hard to test or look up studies for. Did overly emotional or unknowingly sick people fall easier in love or feel attraction? Surely if this is her claim such an experiment would be HUGE news and make her famous by itself. Why just present an anecdote and then continue on to new anecdotes and studies? I didn't finish the book so maybe she gets into more details later on but it doesn't excuse the fact that the beginning of the book is close to being pseudoscience.
The other experiments and claims she had with more supporting evidence were fully unconvincing to anyone in social science. She constantly couldn't get any results in any type of study proving that unique emotions were not real. The problem is that she proves her own claims true by doing her studies as bad as possible. The worse the study design the more she proves her own main claims about all other emotions research being false. And since she started out doing 8 experiments with no findings it's not unlikely that some of her designs were worse than she makes them out to be. At any rate it's extremely easy to not get a result in psychology. It's also easy to get a result too. So she is correct in her critique of many other studies that supposedly disprove her claims.
Instead of proving her theory by not finding any universal emotions with questionable methods she should support her claim by showing that it is possible to manipulate any emotion into any other emotion. So if she can manipulate fear into attraction or hate into pleasure then we are actually seeing something interesting.
I didn't read the whole book so I can't know if the book suddenly becomes good or not. So I'm rating it a star higher for that. But since the first several hundred pages are bad science it's not a book you should read. I also don't think she is lying or completely wrong. Her theory fits a few actual experiments.
Conclusion
Pretty much not a recommended book. I like the theory for sure. I like any weird or impossible theory and like reading this stuff. But not in a full book! A small video or paper would be fine. I don't need to read a 500 page long book about how the moon landing was faked or how FBI flies UFOs over New York. Small videos on this are fun.
In such a long book about emotions I expect a basic intro to emotions and then a presentation of the main evidence. Maybe if you are an expert on emotions and want to read alternative theories you could read this book. But it's light on good evidence.
For any layman reader or non-expert on emotions this is probably a book you just want to avoid. The science is just too unimpressive here. It will likely just confuse you instead of inform you.
Her main claims are basically all wrong and misleading. And so far out that it's not a book that should be recommended to readers who may think her claims are accepted research.
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