Huberman Lab

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: How to Understand Emotions

Mon Oct 16 2023

emotionsfacial expressionslanguagebrainaffectwell-beingrelationships

Description

This episode explores the nature of emotions, debunking traditional views on facial expressions, the complexity of emotions, the debate on universal facial expressions, the influence of language on emotions, the brain's guessing process, the role of affect in emotions, the multimodal representation of emotions, the influence of experience on emotional categories, the role of language in emotion, the brain's predictive process, the influence of body budgeting on emotions, practical steps for emotional well-being, the impact of sleep, exercise, and social connection on well-being, and the impact of relationships on nervous system regulation.

Insights

Emotions are not universally expressed through facial expressions

Scientific research has shown that there is no evidence for universal facial expressions of emotion. Facial expressions vary greatly depending on the situation and cultural context.

Language plays a significant role in understanding and expressing emotions

Different cultures have different labels for emotional states, and having access to words from other cultures can help broaden our understanding of emotions.

The brain's guessing process is essential for survival

The brain constantly guesses at the causes of sensory signals in order to stay alive. These guesses are based on past experiences and help reduce uncertainty.

Affect serves as a summary of the body's state

Affective feelings provide a general sense of how the body is doing. They are not emotions themselves but play a role in regulating bodily systems.

Relationships have a significant impact on well-being

Building strong relationships with others can positively regulate each other's nervous systems and contribute to overall well-being.

Chapters

The Nature of Emotions
Debunking Traditional Views on Facial Expressions
The Complexity of Facial Expressions
The Debate on Universal Facial Expressions
The Complexity of Anger
The Influence of Language on Emotions
Understanding the Brain's Guessing Process
The Role of Affect in Emotions
The Multimodal Representation of Emotions
The Influence of Experience on Emotional Categories
The Role of Language in Emotion
The Brain's Predictive Process
The Influence of Body Budgeting on Emotions
The Impact of Affect on Well-being
Practical Steps for Emotional Well-being
The Influence of Sleep, Exercise, and Social Connection on Well-being
The Impact of Relationships on Nervous System Regulation
The Complexity of Emotions and Well-being
The Influence of Language on Emotions
The Brain's Guessing Process
The Influence of Experience on Emotional Categories
The Role of Language in Emotion
The Brain's Predictive Process
The Influence of Body Budgeting on Emotions
The Impact of Affect on Well-being
Practical Steps for Emotional Well-being
The Influence of Sleep, Exercise, and Social Connection on Well-being
The Impact of Relationships on Nervous System Regulation
The Complexity of Emotions and Well-being

Summary

Transcript

The Nature of Emotions

00:00 - 07:09

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a distinguished professor of psychology and an expert in the study of emotions.
The podcast will discuss the neural circuits and psychological aspects of emotions.
Emotions are related to motivation, consciousness, and affect.
Dr. Feldman Barrett will teach effective emotion regulation and interpreting others' emotional states.
There is a strong connection between emotional states and body movement.
The discussion will provide practical tools for understanding emotions and increasing motivation.

Debunking Traditional Views on Facial Expressions

06:39 - 14:53

Scientists have been debating the definition of emotions for the past 150 years.
The basic building blocks of emotion are not specific to emotions alone, as they can be observed in various experiences.
Coordinated responses involving physiological changes, brain activity, and facial expressions are not unique to emotions but occur in everyday life.
Diagnostic patterns that were believed to be associated with specific emotions, such as increased heart rate or particular facial expressions, do not hold true across cultures or consistently within Western stereotypes.
Scientists have struggled to find distinct physical markers that correspond uniquely to each emotional state.
Facial expressions and emotions have a bidirectional relationship, but not all facial movements are expressions of internal states.
Observing someone's face alone does not provide a complete understanding of their emotional state; it is just one part of a larger sensory ensemble that includes other signals from the environment and the body.

The Complexity of Facial Expressions

14:26 - 22:45

Research shows that babies' cries are not acoustically specific to their needs, and the interpretation of facial expressions depends on context.
The brain constantly receives signals from various sources and makes inferences about the emotional meaning of facial movements in conjunction with other signals.
Feedback between the face and the brain is not unique; it occurs between all muscles and the brain.
Certain patterns of signal over time can be learned by the brain, leading to predictions about what will happen next.
Smiling alone does not necessarily make a person feel happy if their internal state is not already one of happiness.
Studies suggesting that body positioning can affect emotions have been debunked, as there is no simplistic view of the nervous or endocrine system.
The idea that facial expressions universally convey specific emotional states has been challenged by serious scientists of emotions.
Darwin's view on distinctive facial expressions coordinated with specific emotional states was based on Western stereotypes rather than scientific fact.

The Debate on Universal Facial Expressions

22:24 - 30:13

There has been a long-standing debate in psychology about the nature of facial expressions and whether they are universal.
In 2016, the Association for Psychological Science formed a panel of experts to write a consensus paper on the research regarding facial expressions.
The panel concluded that there is no evidence for universal facial expressions of emotion.
Instead, they found that facial expressions vary greatly depending on the situation, even within emotions like anger.
Scowling, for example, occurs only about 35% of the time when people are angry.

The Complexity of Anger

29:52 - 36:52

Scowling is one expression of anger, but it's not the dominant one and there is no dominant expression. Anger is a highly variable emotion that can be expressed in different ways depending on the situation.
Half of the scowls people make are not related to anger, meaning that scowling does not always indicate anger. It could be due to concentration or other reasons.
Emotions like anger are not singular entities but rather categories or groupings of instances. Anger is a process, not an event or a noun.
The expression of emotions varies across different cultures. Western cultures have more access to knowledge about Western cultural practices and norms compared to remote cultures with less access.
Facial movements may not be perceived as having anything to do with emotion in some remote cultures. They may interpret facial expressions differently or not associate them with emotions at all.
There is a preference for recognizing faces with specific configurations, but this preference is learned through exposure and early learning experiences.
Recognizing faces as faces is hardwired but requires both genes and early learning. Cultural and environmental factors play a significant role in shaping how we perceive and understand faces.
Infants learn from their environment, including facial expressions from caregivers who provide comfort and care. Smiling as a cue for happiness is learned through cultural inheritance and reinforcement learning.

The Influence of Language on Emotions

36:24 - 43:38

Language alone is not sufficient to understand and express our emotions.
Different cultures have different labels for emotional states, some of which overlap and some of which are unique.
Having labels from other cultures can help us capture and understand emotional states that may not be marked in our own language.
Examples of emotion concepts from other languages include a German word for the experience of someone deserving a punch, a Polynesian word for exuberant aggression in a group, and a Japanese word for the despair felt when having a baby.
Words we use to label emotions may not always align with the states that other people or cultures care about.
The assumptions behind the questions we ask about emotions are important to consider, as they shape how we approach understanding and labeling them.

Understanding the Brain's Guessing Process

43:17 - 50:15

The brain receives continuous signals from the body's sensory surfaces, but it doesn't know the causes of those signals, only the outcomes.
The brain has to guess at the causes of these signals in order to stay alive.
Guessing is not an intellectual process, but a motor plan for changing the body's internal state to support skeletal motor movements.
These guesses are based on past experiences that have been wired into the brain.
The brain constructs categories of possible futures, outcomes, and motor plans by reinstating bits and pieces of past experience.
Reducing uncertainty is a goal of the brain because uncertainty is metabolically unsustainable.
Brains that don't predict or create categories well deal with high levels of uncertainty.
Context is important in decision-making as both external and internal signals are constantly evolving over time.
The brain narrows down possibilities and selects better guesses through selection mechanisms and incoming signals.

The Role of Affect in Emotions

49:56 - 57:04

The brain constantly processes signals to determine what is worth responding to.
Humans use cues like eye gaze to determine whether something is important or not.
Emotion is connected to the brain's processing of signals.
The brain assembles features from electrical signals and sensory inputs.
There is a compression gradient in the architecture of neurons in the cerebral cortex, reducing dimensionality.

The Multimodal Representation of Emotions

56:40 - 1:03:46

Neurons in the cortex represent features in a compressed form.
The brain creates summaries of summaries as information moves along the neuroaxis.
Midline features in the brain are multimodal summaries of sights, sounds, and smells.
Abstract mental features like threat and reward are represented by lower-dimensional summaries.
Emotions are broad bins or multimodal abstractions that encompass various sensory and motor features.
Words like "anger" are multimodal summaries of different patterns associated with sensory and motor experiences.
Developmental and cultural experiences influence the constraints on word representations for emotions.
Language is a crude descriptor for the complex neural processes involved in emotions.
Emotional granularity refers to the precision and specificity of categories constructed by the brain.
The brain needs to strike a balance between fine-grained and super fine-grained categories for efficiency.

The Influence of Experience on Emotional Categories

1:03:20 - 1:10:05

The brain can construct categories at different scales of generalizability, drawing from past instances associated with specific emotions.
Emotional intelligence involves understanding how the brain constructs emotional categories and working with this knowledge.
The brain's categorization of emotions is not fixed but can be influenced by cultural and societal factors.
There is a concern that society is simplifying and reducing the complexity of emotions through the use of emojis and limited response options.
Complexity in human responses expands and contracts over time, with periods of authoritarian thinking leading to simple judgments and black-and-white thinking.
Compression gradients in the brain result in lossy compression, where details are lost as information is summarized into low-dimensional features.
The brain makes guesses about the meaning of signals based on these compressed features, inferring or guessing at the details at each synapse.

The Role of Language in Emotion

1:10:26 - 1:17:22

Words are a way for us to communicate with each other and represent low-dimensional features that stand in for many detailed features.
Even babies as young as three months old can use words to learn abstract categories, where the word refers to different patterns of sensory motor features.
Babies can categorize visually distinct objects into one category based on shared functions, even if they have different sensory features.
Emotions emerge from the brain's understanding of movement, and our movements can influence how we feel internally.
The brain makes guesses about what will happen next based on previous experiences and prepares motor plans before experiencing sensations.
Sensory predictions are already happening in the brain before actual sensory signals are received.

The Brain's Predictive Process

1:17:02 - 1:24:45

Sensory neurons in the brain can predict sensations, leading to experiences that are constructed by the brain.
Errors of prediction are signals that lead to learning and compression of sensory signals.
Everyday experience can be seen as a controlled hallucination, but it has limitations.
The neural system is dynamic and constantly changing based on inputs and actions taken.
Studying the neural system is challenging due to its complexity and limitations of current technology.
Different individuals may encode and experience emotions differently, either as bodily states or verbal labels.
Understanding emotions and how to deal with them is a challenge in psychology, psychiatry, wellness, and mental health fields.
There is conflicting information about whether one should feel their feelings or use top-down control to change them.
The question of how to handle emotions appropriately without causing harm remains unanswered.

The Influence of Body Budgeting on Emotions

1:24:17 - 1:31:50

Feeling our feelings and using our words are both valid approaches, depending on the situation and goal.
Emotions are recipes for action, and shifting from feeling bad to feeling angry or sad can be a catalyst for change.
Sometimes it is wise to live in the emotion rather than trying to shift off it, as discomfort can be instructive.
The brain constantly regulates the body and receives sensory signals about its state, but we are not wired to consciously experience all these changes.
Instead, the brain creates a low-dimensional summary of these bodily sensations known as affective feelings or mood.
Affective feelings are not emotions; they are features of consciousness that provide a general sense of the body's state.

The Impact of Affect on Well-being

1:31:26 - 1:39:00

The brain is constantly regulating the body and representing its signals in a low-dimensional way.
Affect, or emotional experience, is always present and can be influenced by changing the state of the body.
Emotions are the brain's interpretation of sensory signals and involve understanding their cause and how to respond.
Pathologizing people who experience physical sensations without labeling them as emotions may be misguided.
Being emotionally intelligent includes knowing when not to construct an emotion.
Uncertainty can lead to arousal, which is often interpreted as anxiety but can also drive information-seeking behavior.
Training oneself to interpret physiological sensations differently can change their meaning and response.
Emotions provide cues for action and can be a source of wisdom when understood correctly.

Practical Steps for Emotional Well-being

1:38:43 - 1:45:37

The podcast discusses the importance of knowledge itself and how it can be used in practical ways.
Knowledge can be used to work with unpleasant feelings and give them more dimensionality.
Shifting attention can change the dimensionality of one's sensory experience.
Adding dimensionality to our description and experience of sensory inputs can lead to a richer and more adaptive understanding of the world.

The Influence of Sleep, Exercise, and Social Connection on Well-being

1:45:17 - 1:52:38

Getting sunlight in the morning and getting good sleep at night are mentioned as actions that can positively impact affect.
Lack of sleep can lead to irritability and negative emotions.
Sensory signals from organs and tissues in the body are important for the brain's regulation of bodily systems, but they are usually experienced as affective feelings.
The brain regulates the body through a process called allostasis, which can be metaphorically understood as running a budget for bodily resources like glucose, salt, oxygen, and water.
Social stress can increase inefficiency in metabolizing food, leading to burning more energy and potential weight gain over time.
Affect serves as a quick summary of the state of one's body budget. Feeling okay indicates things are going well, while feeling fatigued or distressed suggests a deficit in the body budget.

The Impact of Relationships on Nervous System Regulation

1:52:10 - 2:00:12

Building strong relationships with friends, romantic partners, and coworkers is important for regulating each other's nervous systems.
Being around people who make you feel good and provide emotional resonance can have a positive impact on your well-being.
Humans are both the best and worst thing for each other's nervous systems, depending on the quality of the relationship.
Research suggests that social isolation and loneliness can negatively affect our well-being, while synchrony in relationships can have a positive impact.
Choosing to be a source of support and savings for others tends to attract more positive relationships.
Synchrony in physical signals, such as heart rate and movements, can occur between individuals who trust and like each other.
Narcissists operate from a deficit of pleasure and intense envy, which can leave healthy individuals feeling taxed after interactions with them.
Regulating each other's nervous systems through deposits and savings allows attention to be directed towards other aspects of life beyond interpersonal dynamics.
Trust within teams is a strong predictor of performance in creative sectors of the economy.
Acts of kindness benefit both the giver and receiver by contributing to body budgeting.
Kindness is underrated but has significant benefits for personal well-being.

The Complexity of Emotions and Well-being

1:59:43 - 2:07:05

Feeling our feelings and using our words are both valid approaches, depending on the situation and goal.
Emotions are recipes for action, and shifting from feeling bad to feeling angry or sad can be a catalyst for change.
Sometimes it is wise to live in the emotion rather than trying to shift off it, as discomfort can be instructive.
The brain constantly regulates the body and receives sensory signals about its state, but we are not wired to consciously experience all these changes.
Instead, the brain creates a low-dimensional summary of these bodily sensations known as affective feelings or mood.
Affective feelings are not emotions; they are features of consciousness that provide a general sense of the body's state.

The Influence of Language on Emotions

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Language alone is not sufficient to understand and express our emotions.
Different cultures have different labels for emotional states, some of which overlap and some of which are unique.
Having labels from other cultures can help us capture and understand emotional states that may not be marked in our own language.
Examples of emotion concepts from other languages include a German word for the experience of someone deserving a punch, a Polynesian word for exuberant aggression in a group, and a Japanese word for the despair felt when having a baby.
Words we use to label emotions may not always align with the states that other people or cultures care about.
The assumptions behind the questions we ask about emotions are important to consider, as they shape how we approach understanding and labeling them.

The Brain's Guessing Process

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

The brain receives continuous signals from the body's sensory surfaces, but it doesn't know the causes of those signals, only the outcomes.
The brain has to guess at the causes of these signals in order to stay alive.
Guessing is not an intellectual process, but a motor plan for changing the body's internal state to support skeletal motor movements.
These guesses are based on past experiences that have been wired into the brain.
The brain constructs categories of possible futures, outcomes, and motor plans by reinstating bits and pieces of past experience.
Reducing uncertainty is a goal of the brain because uncertainty is metabolically unsustainable.
Brains that don't predict or create categories well deal with high levels of uncertainty.
Context is important in decision-making as both external and internal signals are constantly evolving over time.
The brain narrows down possibilities and selects better guesses through selection mechanisms and incoming signals.

The Influence of Experience on Emotional Categories

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

The brain can construct categories at different scales of generalizability, drawing from past instances associated with specific emotions.
Emotional intelligence involves understanding how the brain constructs emotional categories and working with this knowledge.
The brain's categorization of emotions is not fixed but can be influenced by cultural and societal factors.
There is a concern that society is simplifying and reducing the complexity of emotions through the use of emojis and limited response options.
Complexity in human responses expands and contracts over time, with periods of authoritarian thinking leading to simple judgments and black-and-white thinking.
Compression gradients in the brain result in lossy compression, where details are lost as information is summarized into low-dimensional features.
The brain makes guesses about the meaning of signals based on these compressed features, inferring or guessing at the details at each synapse.

The Role of Language in Emotion

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Words are a way for us to communicate with each other and represent low-dimensional features that stand in for many detailed features.
Even babies as young as three months old can use words to learn abstract categories, where the word refers to different patterns of sensory motor features.
Babies can categorize visually distinct objects into one category based on shared functions, even if they have different sensory features.
Emotions emerge from the brain's understanding of movement, and our movements can influence how we feel internally.
The brain makes guesses about what will happen next based on previous experiences and prepares motor plans before experiencing sensations.
Sensory predictions are already happening in the brain before actual sensory signals are received.

The Brain's Predictive Process

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Sensory neurons in the brain can predict sensations, leading to experiences that are constructed by the brain.
Errors of prediction are signals that lead to learning and compression of sensory signals.
Everyday experience can be seen as a controlled hallucination, but it has limitations.
The neural system is dynamic and constantly changing based on inputs and actions taken.
Studying the neural system is challenging due to its complexity and limitations of current technology.
Different individuals may encode and experience emotions differently, either as bodily states or verbal labels.
Understanding emotions and how to deal with them is a challenge in psychology, psychiatry, wellness, and mental health fields.
There is conflicting information about whether one should feel their feelings or use top-down control to change them.
The question of how to handle emotions appropriately without causing harm remains unanswered.

The Influence of Body Budgeting on Emotions

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Feeling our feelings and using our words are both valid approaches, depending on the situation and goal.
Emotions are recipes for action, and shifting from feeling bad to feeling angry or sad can be a catalyst for change.
Sometimes it is wise to live in the emotion rather than trying to shift off it, as discomfort can be instructive.
The brain constantly regulates the body and receives sensory signals about its state, but we are not wired to consciously experience all these changes.
Instead, the brain creates a low-dimensional summary of these bodily sensations known as affective feelings or mood.
Affective feelings are not emotions; they are features of consciousness that provide a general sense of the body's state.

The Impact of Affect on Well-being

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

The brain is constantly regulating the body and representing its signals in a low-dimensional way.
Affect, or emotional experience, is always present and can be influenced by changing the state of the body.
Emotions are the brain's interpretation of sensory signals and involve understanding their cause and how to respond.
Pathologizing people who experience physical sensations without labeling them as emotions may be misguided.
Being emotionally intelligent includes knowing when not to construct an emotion.
Uncertainty can lead to arousal, which is often interpreted as anxiety but can also drive information-seeking behavior.
Training oneself to interpret physiological sensations differently can change their meaning and response.
Emotions provide cues for action and can be a source of wisdom when understood correctly.

Practical Steps for Emotional Well-being

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

The podcast discusses the importance of knowledge itself and how it can be used in practical ways.
Knowledge can be used to work with unpleasant feelings and give them more dimensionality.
Shifting attention can change the dimensionality of one's sensory experience.
Adding dimensionality to our description and experience of sensory inputs can lead to a richer and more adaptive understanding of the world.

The Influence of Sleep, Exercise, and Social Connection on Well-being

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Getting sunlight in the morning and getting good sleep at night are mentioned as actions that can positively impact affect.
Lack of sleep can lead to irritability and negative emotions.
Sensory signals from organs and tissues in the body are important for the brain's regulation of bodily systems, but they are usually experienced as affective feelings.
The brain regulates the body through a process called allostasis, which can be metaphorically understood as running a budget for bodily resources like glucose, salt, oxygen, and water.
Social stress can increase inefficiency in metabolizing food, leading to burning more energy and potential weight gain over time.
Affect serves as a quick summary of the state of one's body budget. Feeling okay indicates things are going well, while feeling fatigued or distressed suggests a deficit in the body budget.

The Impact of Relationships on Nervous System Regulation

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Building strong relationships with friends, romantic partners, and coworkers is important for regulating each other's nervous systems.
Being around people who make you feel good and provide emotional resonance can have a positive impact on your well-being.
Humans are both the best and worst thing for each other's nervous systems, depending on the quality of the relationship.
Research suggests that social isolation and loneliness can negatively affect our well-being, while synchrony in relationships can have a positive impact.
Choosing to be a source of support and savings for others tends to attract more positive relationships.
Synchrony in physical signals, such as heart rate and movements, can occur between individuals who trust and like each other.
Narcissists operate from a deficit of pleasure and intense envy, which can leave healthy individuals feeling taxed after interactions with them.
Regulating each other's nervous systems through deposits and savings allows attention to be directed towards other aspects of life beyond interpersonal dynamics.
Trust within teams is a strong predictor of performance in creative sectors of the economy.
Acts of kindness benefit both the giver and receiver by contributing to body budgeting.
Kindness is underrated but has significant benefits for personal well-being.

The Complexity of Emotions and Well-being

2:06:37 - 2:14:25

Feeling our feelings and using our words are both valid approaches, depending on the situation and goal.
Emotions are recipes for action, and shifting from feeling bad to feeling angry or sad can be a catalyst for change.
Sometimes it is wise to live in the emotion rather than trying to shift off it, as discomfort can be instructive.
The brain constantly regulates the body and receives sensory signals about its state, but we are not wired to consciously experience all these changes.
Instead, the brain creates a low-dimensional summary of these bodily sensations known as affective feelings or mood.
Affective feelings are not emotions; they are features of consciousness that provide a general sense of the body's state.