You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2018

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can you look at someone's face and know what they're feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way? What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are. She shares the results of her exhaustive research -- and explains how we may have more control over our emotions than we think.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily.
0:05.0	This TED Talk features neuroscientist, psychologist, and author Lisa Feldman Barrett, recorded live at TED at IBM 2017.
0:16.0	My research lab sits about a mile from where several bombs exploded
0:21.5	during the Boston Marathon in 2013.
0:24.8	The surviving bomber, Zakhar Sarnayev, of Chechnya,
0:29.0	was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
0:33.0	Now, when a jury has to make the decision
0:34.9	between life in prison and the death penalty,
0:39.1	they base their decision largely on whether or not
0:42.9	the defendant feels remorseful for his actions.
0:46.4	Sarnayev spoke words of apology,
0:49.0	but when jurors looked at his face, all they saw
0:52.6	was a stone-faced stare.
1:03.2	Now, Sarnayev is guilty. There's no doubt about that. He murdered and maimed innocent people,
1:09.4	and I'm not here to debate that. My heart goes out to all the people who suffered. But as a scientist, I have to tell you
1:11.2	that jurors do not and cannot detect remorse
1:15.7	or any other emotion in anybody ever.
1:20.6	Neither can I and neither can you.
1:23.9	And that's because emotions are not what we think they are.
1:26.9	They are not universally expressed and recognized.
1:30.3	They are not hardwired brain reactions that are uncontrollable.
1:35.3	We have misunderstood the nature of emotion for a very long time
	...

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