Lisa Feldman Barrett > Quotes

“Numerous experiments showed that people feel depressed when they fail to live up to their own ideals, but when they fall short of a standard set by others, they feel anxious.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“It takes more than one human brain to create a human mind.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“The word “smile” doesn’t even exist in Latin or Ancient Greek. Smiling was an invention of the Middle Ages, and broad, toothy-mouthed smiles (with crinkling at the eyes, named the Duchenne smile by Ekman) became popular only in the eighteenth century as dentistry became more accessible and affordable.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“The human brain is a cultural artifact. We don't load culture into a virgin brain like software loading into a computer; rather, culture helps to wire the brain. Brains then become carriers of culture, helping to create and perpetuate it.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Scientific revolutions tend to emerge not from a sudden discovery but by asking better questions”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“But one thing is certain: every day in America, thousands of people appear before a jury of their peers and hope they will be judged fairly, when in reality they are judged by human brains that always perceive the world from a self-interested point of view. To believe otherwise is a fiction that is not supported by the architecture of the brain.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Instead think, “We have a disagreement,” and engage your curiosity to learn your friend’s perspective. Being curious about your friend’s experience is more important than being right.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“But evolution has provided the human mind with the ability to create another kind of real, one that is completely dependent on human observers. From changes in air pressure, we construct sounds. From wavelengths of light, we construct colors. From baked goods, we construct cupcakes and muffins that are indistinguishable except by name (chapter 2). Just get a couple of people to agree that something is real and give it a name, and they create reality. All humans with a normally functioning brain have the potential for this little bit of magic, and we use it all the time.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Our words allow us to enter each other’s affective niches, even at extremely long distances. You can regulate your friend’s body budget (and he yours) even if you are an ocean apart—by phone or email or even just by thinking about one another.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Your body-budgeting regions can therefore trick your brain into believing that there is tissue damage, regardless of what is happening in your body. So, when you’re feeling unpleasant, your joints and muscles might hurt more, or you could develop a stomachache. When your body budget’s not in shape, meaning your interoceptive predictions are miscalibrated, your back might hurt more, or your headache might pound harder—not because you have tissue damage but because your nerves are talking back and forth. This is not imaginary pain. It is real.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Sometimes we're responsible for things not because they're our fault, but because we're the only ones who can change them.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“Simulations are your brain’s guesses of what’s happening in the world. In every waking moment, you’re faced with ambiguous, noisy information from your eyes, ears, nose, and other sensory organs. Your brain uses your past experiences to construct a hypothesis—the simulation—and compares it to the cacophony arriving from your senses. In this manner, simulation lets your brain impose meaning on the noise, selecting what’s relevant and ignoring the rest.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“I’ve said several times that the brain acts like a scientist. It forms hypotheses through prediction and tests them against the “data” of sensory input. It corrects its predictions by way of prediction error, like a scientist adjusts his or her hypotheses in the face of contrary evidence. When the brain’s predictions match the sensory input, this constitutes a model of the world in that instant, just like a scientist judges that a correct hypothesis is the path to scientific certainty.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions. From sensory input and past experience, your brain constructs meaning and prescribes action. If you didn’t have concepts that represent your past experience, all your sensory inputs would just be noise. You wouldn’t know what the sensations are, what caused them, nor how to behave to deal with them. With concepts, your”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“You are continually cultivating your past as a means of controlling your future”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett

“When you categorize something as “Not About Me,” it exits your affective niche and has less impact on your body budget. Similarly, when you are successful and feel proud, honored, or gratified, take a step back and remember that these pleasant emotions are entirely the result of social reality, reinforcing your fictional self. Celebrate your achievements but don’t let them become golden handcuffs. A little composure goes a long way.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Your brain is not more evolved than a rat or lizard brain, just differently evolved.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“Brains of higher complexity can remember more. A brain doesn’t store memories like files in a computer​—​it reconstructs them on demand with electricity and swirling chemicals. We call this process remembering but it’s really assembling.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“Through prediction and correction, your brain continually creates and revises your mental model of the world. It’s a huge, ongoing simulation that constructs everything you perceive while determining how you act.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Think of the last time you were thirsty and drank a glass of water. Within seconds after draining the last drops, you probably felt less thirsty. This event might seem ordinary, but water actually takes about twenty minutes to reach your bloodstream. Water can't possibly quench your thirst in a few seconds. So what relieved your thirst? Prediction.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“Today, many of us feel like we live in a highly polarized world, where people with opposing opinions cannot even be civil to each other. If you want things to be different, I offer you a challenge. Pick a controversial political issue that you feel strongly about. […] Spend five minutes per day deliberately considering the issue from the perspective of those you disagree with, not to have an argument with them in your head, but to understand how someone who’s just as smart as you can believe the opposite of what you do.

I’m not asking you to change your mind. I’m also not saying this challenge is easy. It requires a withdrawal from your body budget, and it might feel pretty unpleasant or even pointless. But when you try, really try, to embody someone else’s point of view, you can change your future predictions about the people who hold those different views. If you can honestly say, “I absolutely disagree with those people, but I can understand why they believe what they do”, you’re one step closer to a less polarized world. That is not magical liberal academic rubbish. It’s a strategy that comes from basic science about your predicting brain.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“This is another basis for my frequent claim, “You are an architect of your experience.” You are indeed partly responsible for your actions, even so-called emotional reactions that you experience as out of your control. It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions. You also bear some responsibility for others, because your actions shape other people’s concepts and behaviors, creating the environment that turns genes on and off to wire their brains, including the brains of the next generation. Social reality implies that we are all partly responsible for one another’s behavior, not in a fluffy, let’s-all-blame-society sort of way, but a very real brain-wiring way.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“I can notice a tiny weed forcing its way through a crack in the sidewalk, proving yet again that nature cannot be tamed by civilization, and employ the same concept to take comfort in my insignificance.43 You can experience similar awe when hearing ocean waves crash against rocks on a beach, gazing at the stars, walking under storm clouds in the middle of the day, hiking deep into uncharted territory, or taking part in spiritual ceremonies. People who report feeling awe more frequently also have the lowest levels of those nasty cytokines that cause inflammation (though nobody has proved cause and effect).44 Whether you cultivate awe, meditate, or find other ways to deconstruct your experience into physical sensations, recategorization is a critical tool for mastering your emotions in the moment. When you feel bad, treat yourself like you have a virus, rather than assuming that your unpleasant feelings mean something personal. Your feelings might just be noise. You might just need some sleep.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“The best thing for your nervous system is another human. The worst thing for your nervous system is also another human. This situation leads us to a fundamental dilemma of the human condition.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“The triune brain idea is one of the most successful and widespread errors in all of science.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven And A Half Lessons About The Brain

“Western culture has some common wisdom associated with these ideas. Don’t be materialistic. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Sticks and stones. But I am asking you to take this one step further. When you are suffering from some ill or insult that has befallen you, ask yourself: Are you really in jeopardy here? Or is this so-called injury merely threatening the social reality of your self ? The answer will help you recategorize your pounding heartbeat, the knot in the pit of your stomach, and your sweaty brow as purely physical sensations, leaving your worry, anger, and dejection to dissolve like an antacid tablet in water.40”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“One illusory stripe of a rainbow contains an infinite number of frequencies, but your concepts for “Red,” “Blue,” and other colors cause your brain to ignore the variability.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

“Human beings are not at the mercy of mythical emotion circuits buried deep within animalistic parts of our highly evolved brain: we are architects of our own experience.”
― Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain