How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-11

Chapters 12-13

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

The Role of Language in Creating Emotion Concepts

A recurring theme in Barrett's work is the profound importance of language in the development of emotion concepts. Barrett explains that humans can create emotion concepts only after learning to associate certain words with particular sensations and behaviors. For example, if a parent labels a child’s crying behavior as “sadness,” and this same word is used to describe other people’s actions in different scenarios, the child will form an emotion concept of sadness. The brain then uses this knowledge to create predictive thinking so that the child can respond to certain situations or interpret bodily sensations.

Barrett explains why this process would be impossible without words: “As children grow up, they definitely form a whole conceptual system for emotion. This includes all the emotion concepts they’ve learned in their lives, anchored by the words that name those concepts” (102). Barrett argues that this means that if you don’t have a word to describe a sensation or event, you may not readily feel a particular emotion about it. For instance, Mandarin has five different words for “anger,” while German has three. According to Barrett, a non-native speaker can adopt these emotion concepts, especially if the learner is sharing a social environment with the native language speakers and can contextualize their emotion concepts. By revealing the myriad of different emotion words and concepts that exist throughout world cultures, Barrett makes a case for viewing emotion words as ways of creating meaning rather than simply “static files” that reflect objective “emotional facts.”

Barrett builds on this argument to claim that while animals like dogs can experience “affect,” or strong pleasant or unpleasant feelings, they can’t learn or teach emotion concepts. This is because they lack language, making it impossible for them to label an emotion they’re feeling or actively teach another dog to do the same. Even if a dog developed a certain emotion concept with the help of its owner, the author isn’t convinced that it would be a true emotion concept. Barrett argues, “Without language, however, the dog’s emotion concept would necessarily be narrower than a human’s, and it couldn’t teach the concept to other dogs” (266). By applying her theory of constructed emotion to different animals, Barrett emphasizes her belief in the crucial importance of language in our ability to feel and perceive specific emotions.

Predictive Thinking and Emotion

Another major element of “How Emotions Are Made” is the connection Barrett draws between the brain’s penchant for generating instantaneous predictions based on previous experiences and its ability to construct emotion concepts. According to Barrett, humans understand the world through our brains’ predictive thinking, which she defines as “neural conversations that try to anticipate every fragment of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch that you will experience, and every action that you will take” (59). The brain makes these predictions based on its previous experiences, which can vary widely depending on location, gender, culture, and more. The author uses this information to demonstrate that just as the brain automatically tries to predict what just made a loud sound next door, it also uses predictive thinking to construct emotion concepts in response to external events and even bodily sensations.

This argument is significant because it forms the backbone of Barrett’s Theory of Constructed Emotion, which contrasts directly with essentialist notions of brain function. Instead of viewing the human brain as a reactive organ that generates emotions based on external stimuli, Barrett’s theory places more importance on the previous cultural and personal experiences of the perceiver in making their own emotions: “You might think that your perceptions of the world are driven by events in the world, but really, they’re anchored in your predictions, which are then tested against those little skipping stones of sensory input” (60). She uses this information to support her idea that emotions are generated in much the same way as other thoughts: by the brain’s predictive thinking. Barrett explains:

You and I communicate emotion, in the face of huge variability, by way of the brain’s predictive machinery. You emotions are guided by your predictions. And as I observe you, the emotions I perceive are guided by my predictions (195).

Barrett claims that the finer-tuned one’s predictive thinking is, the more specific one’s emotion concepts are and the more “emotional granularity” one has. For example, young children, who don’t have much life experience and therefore can’t generate specific predictions, find it difficult to differentiate between unpleasant emotions such as anger and sadness. Meanwhile, Barrett says some people can “issue predictions and construct instances of emotion that are finely tailored to fit each specific situation” (180). By explaining how the brain’s predictive thinking subconsciously generates reactions, Barrett helps demonstrate the brain’s core systems and makes an evidence-based argument that people’s emotion concepts can be highly varied and individual.

The Classical View of Emotion, Essentialism, and Bias

Throughout the book, Barrett seeks to discredit the essentialist views about the brain made popular by the classical theory of emotion. In addition, she makes the case that our brain’s wiring makes these arguments seem convincing and intuitive. To advance her argument, Barrett dissects numerous studies that support essentialist views, such as the notion that facial expressions are universal among humans and are always representative of a certain emotion. She reveals the design flaws in these studies that she feels biased them toward an essentialist conclusion. For example, Barrett interrogates the methods used by Paul Ekman to conclude that facial expressions are “fingerprints” for emotions. She argues that by including multiple choice emotion words on his survey (or “forced choice” as Barrett calls it), Ekman and his colleagues biased study subjects toward picking certain answers rather than responding spontaneously with their own interpretations of the photographs. She shows that in similar studies that did not have forced choice, study participants often used different words to describe the pictures with which they were presented. Barrett argues, “This progression is strong evidence that people see an emotion in a face only if they possess the corresponding emotion concept, because they require that knowledge to construct perceptions in the moment” (47).

She argues that, ironically, our inherent brain wiring makes us biased toward essentialist arguments, since they confirm what feels true to us about how our minds function. Barrett argues:

Essentialism is the culprit that has made the classical view extremely difficult to set aside. It encourages people to believe that their senses reveal objective boundaries in nature […] People are almost always unaware that they essentialize; they fail to see their own hands in motion as they carve dividing lines in the natural world (158).

She argues that these common biases toward essentialism are due to the fact that its ideas feel “intuitive” because of the incredible efficiency of the human mind to create emotions and other concepts. She explains, “We experience our own emotions as automatic reactions, so it’s easy to believe that they spring forth from an ancient, dedicated part of the brain” (162). By exposing design flaws in previous studies on emotion and pondering the human mind’s ability to objectively study itself, Barrett helps convey her perspective on the shortcomings of essentialist ideas and the complex nature of interpreting brain science. In doing so she casts doubt on the classical theory of emotion and lends credence to her argument for constructed emotion.