How Emotions Are Made: The Theory of Constructed Emotion

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be posting videos about one of the most important books I've read: How Emotions Are Made, by Lisa Feldman Barrett. She's among the top 1% of cited neuroscientists in the world, and her research on emotions and affect is huge. She's been challenging a lot of the mainstream science and beliefs about emotion, and her message is revolutionary, and very challenging to accept.

I'm going to go over the Theory of Constructed Emotion, as opposed to the Classical idea of Essentialism. We'll be looking at some of the unhelpful metaphors of the past and present, and getting a deeper sense of the connection between the mind and the body, and hopefully come to a place where we can live more embodied than before.

In this video, I'll briefly go over the myths of emotions that are fairly mainstream, and I'll introduce the Theory of Constructed Emotion. In Part 2, I'll talk about How Emotions Are Learned as children, and that's over on my new channel, @SimonsBookClub. Check out the video here:

In Part 3, we'll be looking at how emotions are constructed after we've learned the emotions, and we'll talk about the importance of the interoceptive network and emotion concepts. We'll end off with an examination of anxiety, and then move on to Part 4, where we'll look at some of the challenges we face with emotions, and how those challenges can be better tackled, if we use the framework of the Theory of Constructed Emotion.

Here's the full playlist of videos so far:

If you're into these topics I'm covering, and want to watch Parts 3 and 4 sooner, please consider joining my Patreon. I'm uploading all of my videos there, ad free, before these videos go live on YouTube, and I'm sharing the scripts there in advance as well, in case you prefer reading to watching.

I'm also inviting you to join the Discord, where we're discussing a lot of these ideas, and more, amongst a group of really cool, smart people, all in the spirit of nonviolence and curiosity.

If you want to read more about the Theory of Constructed Emotion, you'll love the book "How Emotions Are Made" by Lisa Feldman Barrett. It's a beautifully articulate description of emotional construction, and is super thorough, with a bibliography longer than some books. Check it out:

You can read more about the book here:

If you're looking for a quicker read, you can check out the wikipedia article:

0:00 Intro and Recap of last two books
1:47 Intro to How Emotions Are Made
2:28 Praise of LFB and Science
3:29 Hardcore Science
4:55 Intro to Emotional Myths
5:53 Brain Blobology
6:23 How Emotions are Taught
7:21 Essentialism vs Construction
8:30 Nature vs Nurture
9:18 Lead into next video

#psychology #emotions #neuroscience

[dma-ch]

2:23 you might be glad to hear that my partner's therapist (in the public mental healthcare system here in Quebec) has vigorously recommended the book (NVC) to him. It's very unfortunate though that there isn't a French translation for the original book. I was pretty surprised about that, there are only small handbooks available. I mean clinical psychology might not be "academia" per se, but it's still good to know that it's recognized by professionals.

[smilesatyourfuneral]

Hmmm, I question that statement about emotions being taught by society. I don't think a young child is taught how to feel grief when a dog passes away: they just spontaneously learn grief from the experience. Nor do I think babies are taught to fear angry voices from society: they just unknowing learn fear as a reaction. The exact way a person feels when experiencing fear or grief may change, but on the whole, my point from not reading the book is that emotions aren't taught by society: they're experienced by people merely living life.

Unless you're saying a human being locked away from everyone from birth would not experience a full range of emotions because they haven't been put into a situation where those feelings could develop. Then I can see we are stating the same point.

[EliCrousey]

The way money is made up… 😁Exactly!!
🧠 Liking the series!! 👍👍

[twizzler]

Don’t mean to rehash things that aren’t important but I was rewatching many of the older past food videos and realized I wasn’t seeing you being shy or tired but it was more of a quiet sadness? Glad to see you pursuing your own passions and making quality content.

[alicealice]

it's really nice to see you doing well! you have much more energy and light in your eyes good to see you back!!

[isabella_]

I enjoy watching your reviews Simon! I saw that you are taking a break with fiction books and i can agree that many fiction works focus too much on action rather than character and relationship development.
However, if you ever wished to try it again in the future would highly recommend Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings, a most underrated book series. A slow paced character-driven and introspective series which highlights trauma and how it affects people throughout their lives.
Anyways! Keep doing what you do! I always look forward to a new and interesting video!

[victoriaburciaga]

Hey Simon! I was wondering it’d be cool for your to review famous books from around the world! I feel you’d be a fan of Haruki Murakami’s work!

[frankenrosie]

happy to see you stepping back into yourself

[robitector]

Further literature: Damasio, Descartes’ Error, 1994; Prototypes of emotions are connections of perceptual patterns with bodily states.