How Emotions Are Made

'How Emotions Are Made did what all great books do. It took a subject I thought I understood and turned my understanding upside down' - Malcolm Gladwell, author of Talking to Strangers When you feel anxious, angry, happy, or surprised, what's really going on inside of you? Perhaps you thought of your emotions as automatic and reactive, a response to the world around you. The thrill of seeing an old friend, the fear of losing someone you love - each of these sensations seems to arise automatically and uncontrollably. But in How Emotions are Made pioneering neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett shatters everything you thought you knew with a compelling new argument: emotions aren't universally pre-programmed into our brains and bodies but, rather, are unique psychological experiences constructed through our personal history, physiology and environment. Relationships, health, parenting, even national security - emotions have serious implications for them all. How Emotions are Made offers a radical new framework that finally explains what you're feeling - and why it matters so much.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Psychiatry and Radiology. She is the author of How Emotions Are Made, and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020). She has received a NIH Director's Pioneer Award for her research on emotion in the brain, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the APS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology in 2021. She lives in Boston.

Introduction - i: Introduction: The Two Thousand Year Old Assumption Chapter - 1: The Search For Emotion's ''Fingerprints'' Chapter - 2: Emotions Are Constructed Chapter - 3: The Myth of Universal Emotions Chapter - 4: The Origin of Feeling Chapter - 5: Concepts, Goals, and Words Chapter - 6: How the Brain Makes Emotions Chapter - 7: Emotions As A Social Reality Chapter - 8: A New View of Human Nature Chapter - 9: Mastering Your Emotions Chapter - 10: Emotions and Illness Chapter - 11: Emotion and the Law Chapter - 12: Is a Growling Dog Angry? Chapter - 13: From Brain to Mind: The New Frontier Acknowledgements - ii: Acknowledgments Section - iii: Appendix A: Brain Basics Section - iv: Appendix B: Supplement for Chapter 2 Section - v: Appendix C: Supplement for Chapter 3 Section - vi: Appendix D: Evidence for the Concept Cascade Section - vii: Bibliography Section - viii: Notes Section - ix: Illustration Credits Index - x: Index