How Emotions Are Made

The Secret Life of the Brain

By: Lisa Feldman Barrett

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

“Fascinating... A thought-provoking journey into emotion science.” - Wall Street Journal

“A singular book, remarkable for the freshness of its ideas and the boldness and clarity with which they are presented.” - Scientific American

“A brilliant and original book on the science of emotion, by the deepest thinker about this topic since Darwin.” - Daniel Gilbert, best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture. A lucid report from the cutting edge of emotion science, How Emotions Are Made reveals the profound real-world consequences of this breakthrough for everything from neuroscience and medicine to the legal system and even national security, laying bare the immense implications of our latest and most intimate scientific revolution.

“Mind-blowing.” - Elle

“Chock-full of startling, science-backed findings... An entertaining and engaging read.” - Forbes

©2017 by Lisa Feldman Barrett. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Book needed a better editor

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This book is very academic, citing study after study, personal anecdote after anecdote. For a more general audience, it needed a firm editor to insist on summarizing or limiting this repetitive information. And while it includes content supporting the social construction theory of emotion, current research literature in the areas of how consciousness is developed and the implications of neuroscience in attachment, consciousness, and emotion receives a cursory glance.

Any additional comments?

The third section was by far the best part of the book.

4 of 5 final chapters are a waste of time

This book should be cut from 13 chapters to 9 by removing chapters 9 through 12. The author makes a strong case for her scientific understanding for how human motions are made. After doing the job the title promises she wanders through chapters 9 through 12 which detract from her message. My other issue is that she presents her concepts as revolutionary while they are not.

The narrator also reads the appendices which are not interesting.

Brilliant science

When I started reading this book on audio I stopped after the first chapter. The first part is quite repetitive, pretty dumbed down, and the reader sounds like she's reading a bedtime story or cosmetics ad copy instead of a work of science. Then I heard the real Lisa Feldman Barrett do an interview on Ginger Campbell's Brain Science Podcast and started reading the actual research behind this book. Feldman Barrett is one of the true revolutionaries in the science of emotion right now. I suspect her editor told her to dumb things down to sell more copies to a popular audience, so the book does not come off as the hard score science it truly represents. Stick with it, and check out Feldman Barrett's actual research (or maybe Ledoux's newer works or The Handbook of Emotion) and you won't be disappointed.

Lots to digest, but worth thinking about

This book is academic but highly readable, and well read. It challenges many common notions that she calls essentialist and suggests a radically new way of thinking about ourselves and our world.

She does not stop there, but puts her theories into storied practice, suggesting how her ideas would revolutionize law, and draws out implications for education and self understanding.

It's a book that I will have to read a second time to really understand what she means by key terms such as "body budget."

Will this be a new scientific revolution? It may be. Constructionism already dominates teacher training programs, often in a wrong-headed way that stands in as a extreme cultural and moral relativism. But this is a book of science, which seeks with all the tools of modern research to seek a truer understanding of human nature and present it as compelling narrative.

intellectually challenging and fascinating

This book proved that what I knew about emotions was wrong and enriched my understanding of them.
If you you enjoy a serious intellectual challenge, then buy this book. If you are the parent of a young child, then buy it and listen to it even more carefully, as it holds some priceless advice.