HowEmotionsAreMade
How emotions are made (Lisa Barrett)
- Good start. Faded fast. Bailed on last chapter.
- Too repetitive and vague he in places. Did not resonant with thrust of the argument.
- Main point emotions are not some brute reflex at odds with our rationality ("Classical view of emotion")
- Claims emotions are not what we think they are, but does little to say what they are. "Product of human agreement"
- Historical record implies that ancient Romans did not smile when happy. "Smile" does not exist in Latin. (Invention of the Middle ages) Toothy smiles became popular only in the 18C as dentistry became more accessible.
- You experience right now was predicted by your brain a moment ago.
- Events in the world merely tune your predictions.
- 50% of the words we hear cannot be understood out of context.
- Emotions not reactions to the world, they are you reconstruction of the world.
- One of our most notable adaptations is that we have genes that let our brain develop in the context of other brains (Culture!)
- Darwin made an inexplicable about-face in "Expression of Emotion in man and animals" returning to essentialism, abandoning his previous innovation.
- Darwin wrote that emotional imbalance could cause fuzzy hair.
- The very words that help us to learn concepts can also trick us into believing that their categories reflect firm boundaries in nature.
- Phrenology measure mental essences as bumps on the skull
- In the last 20 years become clear that the immune system involved in far more illness than used to think.
- Nocebo effect (Feel pain when no physical harm) Opposite of the placebo
- Infants prior to the 1980s where not anesthetized during major surgery, on belief that couldnt feel pain.
- Children who experince early adversity and hardship have shorter telomeres.