How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Barrett cites an old riddle: “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” She uses this riddle to explain that sights and sounds don’t exist in nature without a conscious being who can process that sensory information in the brain. She explains that our predictive processes enable our “mind’s eye” to visualize things at will, creating simulations that aren’t real in the moment. Barrett contrasts perceiver-dependent experiences, such as sights and sounds, with perceiver-independent things, like atoms. She raises the question of whether emotions are “real” and categorizes them with other perceiver-dependent things, since “they are all constructed in the brain of a perceiver” (132). However, Barrett calls the debate about whether emotions are “real” or “illusory” a “false dichotomy.” Instead, scientists should acknowledge that the human brain creates emotion concepts that then have substantial consequences in relationships and culture and therefore have “social reality.” She argues that emotion words such as “anger” and “fear” are not outdated “folk concepts” but should be appreciated as contributing to our understanding of how the brain produces emotion.

Barrett emphasizes the power of our other shared social realities, such as the value we assign to money or works of art. She writes that a better scientific line of inquiry is, “How do emotions become real?” (134). Once the brain and body create emotion through interoception, society affirms these emotions through “collective intentionality,” or agreeing that these concepts exist. Language is another important factor in creating social reality and, when used with collective intentionality, can help people communicate and influence each other. Words help us create shared concepts and communicate more efficiently, and emotion concepts are more readily learned when associated with certain words. Words also help us contextualize our emotions; for example, fear and surprise are often the same kind of feeling, yet we use different words to label them to help communicate the context.

Barrett claims that emotions serve the following functions for individuals: to make meaning from bodily experiences, to prescribe action, and to help regulate body budget. Our emotions help with communication and social influence. The author argues that we can’t definitively know what someone else is feeling but that each word and action is open to interpretation and social consensus. She acknowledges that emotions are as real as any other part of social reality but clarifies that they “only exist in the presence of human perceivers” (140).

The author claims that people can’t experience or perceive emotions if they have no “concept” for them. Although they feel “built-in,” Barrett argues that our emotions are in fact constructed through socialization and not encoded physically in our genes. She calls brains “cultural artifacts” because human culture has helped wire the brain, which in turn informs our culture. This means that we feel emotions such as fear and happiness because our ancestors labeled these emotion concepts and taught us to identify them. As such, concepts become a “biological reality that is wired into your brain by culture” (145). The author gives numerous examples of different emotions across world cultures, including “forelsket,” the Norwegian term for feeling joyful while falling in love, and “saudade,” the Portuguese word for spiritual longing. While these feelings may seem less “real” than those identified by English speakers, Barrett argues that people who learn those concepts make predictions with them and feel them as intensely as we feel any emotion familiar to us.

Cultural differences in emotion can extend to daily behavior as well; Barrett notes that Dutch, Russian, and British acquaintances of hers commented on how much Americans value happiness, how often they smile, and how they express excitement about challenge. However, as Barrett’s Dutch colleague Batja discovered, our brains and emotions can also change through exposure to new cultural concepts, a process called “emotional acculturation.” This process helps people adapt to a new environment and even make their body budgets more efficient by not creating as many “prediction errors” in the brain.

Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion emphasizes people’s agency over their emotional lives, as opposed to the more reactive classic view. While the classical view of emotion perceives the human brain as completely separate from the external world that triggers its reactions, the constructed theory doesn’t create such a distinct “dividing line” between the human brain and the world. This is because interoception helps us perceive our environments in a certain way to aid our survival. Meanwhile, the outside world is also influencing brain development and, for better or worse, impacting its wiring. Barrett notes that “it takes more than one brain to create a mind” (154).

The author argues that her theory can have wide-ranging implications for how we interpret people’s actions. For example, if an angry employee insults his boss in a rage, the classical view of emotion may find him guiltless since he was overwhelmed by anger. However, the constructed theory would view his actions as intentional and emphasize the predictive workings of his mind in choosing that inappropriate reaction. This raises the question of whether we’re “responsible” for all our concepts. Barrett argues that some concepts become entrenched in our minds involuntarily, such as those we acquire as infants, but as adults we can make conscious choices about which concepts we allow our brains to rely on. Barrett ponders the example of global conflicts such as the Bosnians and Serbs or the Israelis and Palestinians, arguing that these groups aren’t at fault for feeling angry with each other, since their concepts were taught by previous generations, but are responsible for changing their concepts and actions now. The author believes that social reality makes us jointly responsible for helping wire each other’s brains for the better. Barrett maintains that the human brain is too dynamic and flexible for us to share one universal neural system, so different social environments create varied human minds. She contends, “We don’t need one universal brain creating one universal mind to claim we are all one species” (156).

The author then explores why the classical view of emotion has remained so dominant for such a long time. She cites Darwin’s 1872 book “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” as forwarding the idea that human emotions are caused by genetic traits we inherited from our animal ancestors and that each emotion has an identifiable fingerprint, or “essence.” The belief in essences led to “essentialism”—the idea that different kinds of people, such as men and women, have different “true” natures. This view then extended to emotions, as many scientists argued that emotions, too, had unique “essences.” Famous scientists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Ekman made essentialist arguments about emotion. Barrett argues that Darwin’s arguments entrenched much of psychology into classical emotion thinking but also makes Darwin look like a “hypocrite” because his theory of evolution, which shows how variation can benefit a species, starkly contrasts with the idea of emotion essences, which would require stagnancy and “sameness.” Therefore, while Darwin tried to eliminate essentialism from biology, he perpetuated it in psychology. Many have attributed essentialist views to William James, a hugely influential academic considered the “father” of American psychology, though Barrett argues that he only claimed instances of emotions could be associated with certain “bodily states.” John Dewey misrepresented William James’s ideas in his own theory, which then influenced Antonio Domasio, a neurologist who contends that emotions have specific physical fingerprints he calls “somatic markers.”

Barrett thinks essentialism has stood the test of time because of its “intuitive” nature and the difficulty of disproving it. Ironically, the fact that language is crucial in helping us form concepts also prompts us to create rigid categories that can lead us to think in simplistic, essentialist terms. The author cites a study on children’s perceptions of cylinders that reveals our predisposition to essentialist thinking. She laments the firm hold that the classical view of emotion has on scientific thought and ponders how the classical and Darwinian views of human origins and emotions satisfy the human need for a particular narrative around human nature. Our understanding of emotion has informed our legal system; for example, if you report feeling overwhelmed by emotion while committing a crime, the system may label it a “crime of passion” and therefore hold you less responsible for your behavior. Unlike religious views, the classical theory posits that we’re composed of unchangeable, genetically bestowed forces, including our capability for rational thinking, which separates us from other animals. Barrett revisits Darwin’s theories about emotion and finds that some of his arguments, such as those about facial expressions, were misinterpreted by scientist Floyd Allport to be more essentialist than Darwin intended. Barrett laments that sometimes Darwin’s ideas have been used as a “protective cloak” over other scientists’ theories, guarding them from rigorous scientific criticism.

Barrett points to 19th century scientist Paul Broca for perpetuating simplistic theories about the human brain that attached certain functions, such as language, to specific areas of the brain. Additionally, Broca held that older, “reptilian” parts of the human brain enable emotional experiences, while more recently evolved brain regions enable rational thought. Broca called the animalistic part of our brain the “limbic system,” a notion that modern neuroscientists no longer recognize as scientifically relevant. Barrett reiterates that no “home” of emotional responses exists in the brain; different parts of the brain function together in myriad ways to generate emotion.

Barrett then provides a brief overview of interpretations of brain function throughout history, from Plato to Ibn al-Haytham to Spinoza, leading to the proponents of classical emotion theory and the opposing emotion construction theory today. The author explains that while she hopes scientists will adopt more constructionist views, she fears that the classical view may remain dominant. She notes that in the 1930s many psychologists tried in vain to prove the existence of emotional fingerprints, or essences, and, upon failing, began to discuss the possibility of emotional construction. However, because their discussions ran counter to the dominant narrative, they failed to make a significant change in the field. Barrett notes that classical emotion theory continues to fuel perceptions and innovation today, as evident in technology designed to identify facial expressions for everything from artificial intelligence (AI) to political purposes. Barrett posits that had constructionist views become more mainstream a hundred years ago, society would have saved billions of dollars in research and developed better parenting philosophies and mental health advice. She thinks that we’re in a “golden age” of data-driven brain research and hopes that the results of modern studies help change the field of psychology, much as lived experience can rewire the brain.