A psychologist rethinking human emotion | Hacker News Reader

A psychologist rethinking human emotion

theguardian.com

32 pointselsewhen24 comments

Oh god no. Lisa Barett-Feldman is mostly marketing, I do not see any great additions from her to the debate regarding emotions. Don't get me wrong, the state of affairs of theories of emotion is lamentable. But her views are (mostly) either already established, or obviously wrong. She creates strawmen. "No emotion is tied to a single, objective state in the body" is misleading at best. Of course it is not, no one in the field thought so previously.

Stating that emotions are "cultural" explains nothing, and it is also demonstratebly wrong if taken to the absolute. Blind people do show facial expressions very similar to non-blind people (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978111951934...). Barett-Feldman simply ignores the large amount of evidence for specific, biological foundations of emotions. That is why she is controversial.

Also I am not even sure she sees things that differently, just claimes she does. Her view, as I understand it: Specific body experiences (affect) differ in two main qualities, arousal (how strong) and valence (pleasantness). The interpretation of affect as a specific emotion is a culturally influenced cognitive act. Apart from the cultur-thing that is exactly Schachter and Singer's theory on emotion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory_of_emotion).

Is there a consistent mapping between context factors and affect? If yes, how can you claim that there is no biological, innate basis for emotion? If no, how can she claim that there is a thing called "affect", if you cannot consistently produce the reaction?

If all you do is say that affect and emotions are not the same, where is the contribution? Then you are over 2,000 years too late, the old Greeks already had some ideas on that.

I see value here. On the one hand, emotions are socially constructed. That may be well known and obvious, I don't know. On the other hand, I find specifying these axes useful: (un)pleasantness which is axiological, (un)certainty which is epistemological and the "(un)excitation" axis which is more "physical." Separating these components by analysing ones state seems like a useful exercise giving a finer grained view of the variables in play and what can be done with them. Though, yes, I don't think that it's novel that they are influenced by metabolism, that's a pretty basic consequence of materialism and we were taught that in psych 101. Maybe there are already existing models that cover this though.

On one hand, of course emotional palettes are cultural artifacts. On the other hand, though, by what logic does her choice of pop-science concepts lead to a deeper understanding of those cultural artifacts?

The way she talks to her daughter is pretty fucked up.

Emotions predate cultures and people, apes and even dogs can be angry or content. Restraint and expression is of course cultural.

Hacker News always delivers, two comments and I'm already not buying the book (I'm a sucker for good science marketing, her book was in my basket when I decided to read "the comments")

Get Jaak Panksepp's "Affective Neuroscience" OR "The Archeology of the Mind" instead.

> Chief among these misconceptions is the view that feelings are innate and universal, and can be consistently measured. So, anger, for example, is thought of as a fundamental building block of human nature with a tell-tale physiological “fingerprint”; all we’ve done is gone and named it. But that idea is categorically untrue, Barrett says, and reams of scientific data now back her up.

What scientific data? Not a single link in this entire article for anything to support these (like many have said already) preposterous or obvious claims.

Isn't it absurd to demand scientific evidence inside guardian article about book? Their articles never link to scientific articles and it is odd to expect this one to be exception.

I can’t tell if you’re being snarky or genuine. I rarely read “the guardian” but if you’re going to claim “reams of scientific data” exist, I’m going expect a link to something, or a quote from the book, or anything to back up this claim. Whether it a a tweet or a random book review.

Actually, there is scientific data in the form or the books and articles written by Jaak Panksepp. It documents the source of anger in the RAGE primary affect, complete with anatomical analysis of the nuclei involved. It just happens that the data from those articles supports a view that is the exact opposite of hers. ;)

The top comments have dissuaded me from reading the book. What book should I read to learn how to process my emotions more effectively?

I found the idea of this book interesting because it seems to encourage "precision" in describing how one "feels".

> instead of saying “I’m scared,” she blurted out: “I’m experiencing high arousal from uncertainty.”

Are there other schools of thought in emotion-processing which are (i) not crank, and (ii) do a good job at teaching one how to process?

It might not be what you are looking for. For me, meditation helped. Through headspace app, some courses were specific about anxiety or stress.

Read "Affective Neuroscience" (or Archeology of the Mind) by Jaak Panksepp for a better understanding of where emotions come from (primary affect).

Read "Mindsight" by Daniel Siegel for a view on higher level emotional processing. You can "sample" his ideas by watching some of his interviews on Mindsight.

Read "Passage Meditation" by Eknath Easwaran for a simple and accessible program of meditation. Meditation, in its various forms, improves emotional control.

Standard guardian infomercial about standard pseudo science book that will blow your mind and hack your life. I really think they have a standard recipe for these by now:

Take some facts that are commonly known and accepted. In this case the body state (food, sleep, exercise, illness, etc) influence your state of mind/emotions. This is the hook that establishes trust.

Conclude what is obvious but completely unhelpful: you have to live a balanced life. No shit?! But present it in a long and pretentious manner that will make your readers have a ridiculous Eureka! moment.

Then add the twist. The completely unproven and unsupported theory that sounds good:

> instead of saying “I’m scared,” she blurted out: “I’m experiencing high arousal from uncertainty.”

> “Anger” is a cultural concept

Choosing different wording and expressions for emotions will not change how you feel or how you act. It will only make communication difficult with other people.

EDIT: a rose by any other name...

> Choosing different wording and expressions for emotions will not change how you feel or how you act.

It might change how you perceive emotions, which might change how you feel or act.

First of all, a theory full of "might" is not exactly useful. Secondly, even if it does who says it will change it an correct direction?

You can easily non-scientifically argue that that’s just a form of repression and the blow back will be magnificent.

I’m not sure I follow, perhaps I’m missing some context. Can you elaborate?

In fact, psychologists strive on wording, asking angry people why they are "irritated" and such, so there's nothing new in influencing attitudes through language.

Trying to present it as a mighty self-administered hack is probably still quackery.

> Choosing different wording and expressions for emotions will not change how you feel or how you act.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tries to do that.

> CBT focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems.

I fail to find "wording" in that quote. CBT deals with thoughts, not the exact words used to describe them.

> Choosing different wording and expressions for emotions will not change how you feel or how you act.

Actually, having more nuanced vocabulary about negative feeling helps a lot in thinking about what you feel, why and dealing with emotions.

If you use anger for large group of feelings (like fear, threat, uncertainty, pressure, stress) you cant look for proper solutions nor properly communicate to others what your issue is. The result is random blowups and aggression. If you can say that "this feels like threat", then you can analyze why it feels like threat and act more rationally.

Let me repeat: what you just said sounds good and logical, but is in fact unsupported by actual science. Another completely opposed theory that sounds just as good and logical is that you can call a thing whatever you want it is still the same thing.

It is what helped me personally to deal with situations. The moment where I personally realized the name for emotion I felt was the moment where I was able to think about situation differently and solve what was causing it. It both made it easier to pretend calm in the moment and to find to correct response toward people I was dealing with.

It is not like emotions were something special here. Having names for things helps to analyze, talk and think about those things in general. That is why patterns book was useful originally.

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