Emotion As a Way of Knowing

In the article, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Northeaster University in Boston psychologists discusses her theory of how emotions work. She shares the story when she misunderstood her feelings of a guy she thought she liked to become some sort of side effect of her flu. But how could something so irrelevant shape our feelings and emotions of something. She opposes Charles Darwin's "emotion fingerprint" theory in which every emotion creates different body cues. She says no to this theory, the body cues of emotions have huge overlaps with each other. When you feel sad and angry, your face expressions would most likely include a frown in both emotions which suggests that Barrett may have a point. She also theorizes that the body signals such as illness, hunger, anxiety, etc. is based on the circumstance or the situation that is happening, such as what happened on her date when she felt the her stomach churning for her love of the guy. 

Barrett theorizes that emotion is not something that you were born with, it is not something that is in your genetics and DNA but instead, they are something that is developed as you grow up based on the social circumstances and environment you are under. So emotion can also be part of your identity because just like your identity, it is determined by your surroundings. She supports this theory by experimenting people from across the world including people from Namibia where their emotions create different facial expressions that the Westerners would have, which is obviously due to the different social circumstances they both are living in. The fact that Western countries are more developed that countries like Namibia may play a major role in this difference. Because of their way of living, they may form and develop their own reactions to certain emotions that differs from other cultures. Barrett also mentioned that the Greeks and the Romans did not smile often and even the word "smile" does not exist in Latin. She joked that this is due to the fact that dentistry was not well accessible before the 18th century so smiling would look bad for the Greeks and the Romans. 

Barrett also discussed the importance of the development of vocabularies in order to further describe emotion. And borrowing terms from other cultures to describe emotion would also enhance diversity because people from different cultures feel differently. Understanding each other's emotions would lead to a better understanding between people because they are able to communicate their emotions easier with the new vocabularies. 

Comments

  1. EthicuzOctober 25, 2017 at 12:44 AM

    After reading your opinion and seeing the insight on how you interpreted this article, I think it's very interesting that social circumstances are what develop what our facial expressions mean rather than it being the same internationally. I think it's great that that was the focus of your response, as it is a very intriguing concept.

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  2. Rebecca.fOctober 25, 2017 at 12:45 AM

    I like the way you discussed how emotions can overlap, when in completely different situation. I agree with your statement that emotions are part of our identity as they are developed by our environment to shape our emotions.

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  3. JoOctober 25, 2017 at 12:52 AM

    The fact that the word 'smile' doesn't exist in Latin interests me, with support from the part where Barrett mentioned that Romans never smiled. But what mostly interested me was the last point that Barrett discussed according to your article in which you mention that she discussed the importance of development of vocabularies in order to further describe emotion. I personally find this the most interesting point you have stated as I know myself that if you compare certain words in the English language to similar words in a different language such as Japanese, where some words tend to have more emotional impact even though they are the same.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownOctober 25, 2017 at 12:57 AM

    Vocabulary is supper important, it is amazing how languages really come from cultures and really being lazy with them languages develop. i know that for a lot of us who are Multilingual they would struggle to explain things in different languages. i do have situations where i know what to say, i know it in Arabic but there is just no way i could say it in English.

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