Emotions aren’t automatic reactions—they are brain-generated experiences built from predictions based on past experiences.

Emotions Are Constructed, Not Hardwired

Instead of reacting to the world, your brain anticipates it—constructing emotions in advance using context, memory, and internal sensations.

The Brain as a Prediction Machine

We feel emotions through learned concepts—your culture and language heavily influence how you experience and categorize feelings.

Concepts Shape Emotion

Your brain interprets internal body signals (like heart rate or fatigue) to help construct emotional experiences.

Interoception: The Body’s Role in Emotion:

By expanding emotional vocabulary and awareness, you can reshape how you feel and respond—empowering emotional intelligence and resilience.

You Can Retrain Your Emotional Life

Lisa Feldman Barrett challenges everything we thought we knew about emotions, revealing that they are not universal reactions but brain-made concepts shaped by experience, culture, and prediction.

Preeminent psychologist Lisa Barrett lays out how the brain constructs emotions in a way that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind. “Fascinating . . . A thought-provoking journey into emotion science.”—The 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.

PURANA PEN 's Key Ideas from How Emotions Are Made
by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Emotions Are Constructed, Not Hardwired

The Brain as a Prediction Machine

Concepts Shape Emotion

Interoception: The Body’s Role in Emotion:

You Can Retrain Your Emotional Life

Different Perspectives Curated by Others from How Emotions Are Made

Discover Key Ideas from Books on Similar Topics

PURANA PEN 's Key Ideas from How Emotions Are Madeby Lisa Feldman Barrett

Emotions Are Constructed, Not Hardwired

The Brain as a Prediction Machine

Concepts Shape Emotion

Interoception: The Body’s Role in Emotion:

You Can Retrain Your Emotional Life

Different Perspectives Curated by Others from How Emotions Are Made

Discover Key Ideas from Books on Similar Topics

PURANA PEN 's Key Ideas from How Emotions Are Made
by Lisa Feldman Barrett