How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Pdf Book Name: How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
Author: Lisa Feldman Barrett
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-10, 13: 9780544129962,0544129962
Year: 2017
Pages: 189 Pages
Language: English
File size: 8 MB
File format: PDF,EPUB

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain Pdf Book Description:

On December 14, 2012, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty six people inside the school, including twenty children, were massacred by a lone gunman. Several weeks after this horror, I watched the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, give his annual “State of the State” speech on television. He spoke in a strong and animated voice for the first three minutes, thanking individuals for their service. And then he began to address the Newtown tragedy: We have all walked a very long and very dark road together. What befell Newtown is not something we thought possible in any of Connecticut’s beautiful towns or cities. And yet, in the midst of one of the worst days in our history, we also saw the best of our state. Teachers and a therapist that sacrificed their lives protecting students.

As the governor spoke the last two words, “protecting students,” his voice caught in his throat ever so slightly. If you weren’t paying close attention, you might have missed it. But that tiny waver devastated me. My stomach instantly knotted into a ball. My eyes flooded. The TV camera panned to the crowd where other people had started to sob too. As for Governor Malloy, he stopped speaking and was gazing downward. Emotions like Governor Malloy’s and mine seem primal—hardwired into us, reflexively deployed, shared with all our fellow humans. When triggered, they seem to unleash themselves in each of us in basically the same way. My sadness was like Governor Malloy’s sadness was like the crowd’s sadness. Humanity has understood sadness and other emotions in this way for over two thousand years. But at the same time, if humanity has learned anything from centuries of scientific discovery, it’s that things aren’t always what they appear to be. The time-honored story of emotion goes something like this: We all have emotions built-in from birth. They are distinct, recognizable phenomena inside us. When something happens in the world, whether it’s a gunshot or a flirtatious glance, our emotions come on quickly and automatically, as if someone has flipped a switch. We broadcast emotions on our faces by way of smiles, frowns, scowls, and other characteristic expressions that anyone can easily recognize. Our voices reveal our emotions through laughter, shouts, and cries. Our body posture betrays our feelings with every gesture and slouch. posture betrays our feelings with every gesture and slouch.