The New Science Of Emotions, Anxiety & Brain Health - Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett - #987

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
How unique is the way that we all experience emotions? Is your experience of anxiety or anger or joy the same as mine or different?

**Lisa Feldman Barrett** (0:12)
Well, I think the proper question to start with is your experience of joy on one occasion exactly the same as your experience of joy on another occasion. And I think what we know is the answer is no, it isn't. That joy or anger or any other word for emotion really refers to a population of instances that are variable, not infinitely variable, but variable and tied to the situation that you're in. So sometimes anger is pleasant and sometimes it's unpleasant. Sometimes it's, you know, you're full of energy during anger and other times you're not. Sometimes your blood pressure goes up, sometimes it goes down, sometimes it stays the same, depending on what actions you're taking. And your actions differ in anger, right? People scowl in anger about 35% of the time, which is more than chance. But that means 65% of the time people express anger in this culture, in Western cultures, actually I should say in urban cultures, because it's in the East and the West. This is meta-analytic evidence.
65% of the time you're doing something else with your face in anger, you might smile in anger, you might cry in anger, you might sit silently and plod the demise of your enemy in anger, and half the time when you scowl, you're not angry, you're feeling something else. So the point being that all this variation is not random, but it's not, anger isn't one thing, joy isn't one thing. So when you ask the question, is your experience of joy the same as mine? And I think what you mean is to say is your vocabulary of joy the same as mine, is your distribution of joy, is your population of instances the same as mine? And probably not, but there has to be enough overlap that we can communicate about it or else we wouldn't be communicated, right?

**Chris Williamson** (2:13)
That suggests that the breadth of language that you have to be able to describe the things that you're feeling unlocks in some way or enables you to have a deeper or richer emotional experience.

**Lisa Feldman Barrett** (2:28)
Yeah, I think that, you know, the focus on words, on language is there, but language isn't really the point. The point is your ability to, your concepts or your knowledge. So, that tends to be linked to words, but words aren't really necessary. I think this is a constant confusion that people have, that if you just label your experience differently, you know, you'll have a richer experience, and that's not true at all. But it does tend to be the case that words are invitations to learn concepts. They're invitations for knowledge. That's how they work.
And the larger your vocabulary is, the more concepts you probably have, and that's what's going to lead to a richer emotional life.

**Chris Williamson** (3:18)
What's a better way to think about emotional richness beyond just the words?

**Lisa Feldman Barrett** (3:23)
Well, really what's happening under the hood is that your brain is receiving signals from the sensory surfaces of your body, from your eyes, from your ears, from your nose, and all the surfaces inside your body. For glucose and oxygen and, you know, the stretching of muscles or the contraction muscles and so on. So your brain is being flooded really with these signals, and it has to make sense of these signals. And the way that it does is by calling on instances or reinstating instances from the past that are similar to the present. A group of things which are similar to one another is called a category. And a representation of a category is a concept. So basically, your brain is making meaning out of signals. Your brain doesn't know what an increase in heart rate means.
There is no objective meaning, psychologically speaking, of a raise and of an increase in heart rate. Your brain has to make sense of that. And the more varied experiences you have in the past, the more words or concepts that you, the more words you know, the more concepts you've learned, gives you more flexibility for making meaning. So in the same way that a basket can be something to carry vegetables in, or it could be a weapon, or it could be a door prop, or you could use it as a chair if you needed to, that is the structure, you could make meaning of it in a lot of different ways by acting on it in different ways, in different situations to suit your goals. The same is true for an increase in heart rate, right? Or a flash of light, or a loud sound. You have some, you don't have infinite flexibility, but you have some flexibility in how you create meaning, and that is ultimately what your emotional life derives from.