How Emotions Are Made
by Lisa Feldman Barrett

The Secret Life of the Brain

When you feel anxious, angry, happy, or surprised, what’s really going on inside you? Most scientists would agree that emotions come from specific parts of the brain, and that we feel them whenever they’re triggered by the world around us. This understanding of emotion has been around since Aristotle. But what if it’s wrong? In How Your Emotions Are Made, pioneering psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett draws on the latest scientific evidence to reveal that our ideas about emotion are dramatically, even dangerously, out of date - and that we have been paying the price. Emotions don’t exist objectively in nature, Barrett explains, and they aren’t pre-programmed in our brains and bodies; rather, they are psychological experiences that each of us constructs based on our unique personal history, physiology and environment. Has serious implications individually and for society as a whole. A big read at 420 pages!