The Secret Life Of Emotions - Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett

How unique is the way that we all experience emotions? Is your experience of anxiety or anger or joy the same as mine, or different?

Well, I think the proper question to start with is, your experience of joy on one occasion exactly the same as your experience of joy on another occasion? And I think what we know is the answer is no, it isn't. That joy or anger or any other word for emotion really refers to a population of instances that are variable. Not infinitely variable, but variable and tied to the situation that you're in. So sometimes anger is pleasant and sometimes it's unpleasant. Sometimes it's, you know, you're full of energy during anger, and other times you're not. Sometimes your blood pressure goes up, sometimes it goes down, sometimes it stays the same, depending on what actions you're taking. And your actions differ in anger, right? People scowl in anger about 35% of the time, which is more than chance. But that means 65% of the time people express anger in this culture, in Western cultures, actually I should say in urban cultures, because it's in the East and the West, um, that this is, um, meta-analytic evidence, um, 65% of the time you're doing something else with your face in anger. You know, you might smile in anger, you might cry in anger, you might sit silently and plot the demise of your enemy in anger. And half the time when you scowl, you're not angry. You're feeling something else. So the point being that, you know, all this variation is not random, but it's not, um, but it's not... You know, anger isn't one thing, joy isn't one thing. So when you ask the question, "Is your experience of joy the same as mine?" I think what you mean is, to say, is, um, your vocabulary of joy the same as mine? Is your distribution of joy, is your population of instances the same as mine? And, um, probably not. But there, there has to be enough overlap that we can communicate about it or else we wouldn't be communicating. Right?

That suggests that the breadth of language that you have to be able to describe the things that you're feeling unlocks, in some way, or enables you to have a deeper or richer emotional experience.

Yeah, I think the, the, you know, the focus on words, on language is there, but it's, language isn't really the point. The point is your ability to, um, h- your concepts or your knowledge. So that tends to be linked to words. But words aren't really necessary. I think this is a constant confusion that people have, that if you just label your experience differently, you know, you'll have a richer experience. And that's not true at all. Um, but it does tend to be the case that words are invitations to learn concepts, they're invitations for knowledge. That's how they work. And the more vocab, the larger your vocabulary is, the more concepts you probably have, and that's what's going to lead to a richer emotional life.