Lisa Feldman Barrett's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Lisa Feldman Barrett recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Lisa Feldman Barrett's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
How do you feel? Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Is your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Are you antsy with Iktsuarpok? Or giddy with dépaysement?

The Book of Human Emotions is a gleeful, thoughtful collection of 156 feelings, both rare and familiar. Tiffany Watt Smith covers the globe and draws on history, anthropology, science, art, literature, music and popular culture to explore them. Each emotion has its own story, and reveals the strange forces which shape our rich and varied internal worlds. You’ll discover feelings you...
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Recommended by Lisa Feldman Barrett, and 1 others.

Lisa Feldman BarrettA fantastic book, chock full of examples showing that emotions are not universal, and how they’re not even static historically in time. (Source)

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2
This is the first inexpensive edition of the complete Long Course in Principles of Psychology, one of the great classics of modern Western literature and science and the source of the ripest thoughts of America’s most important philosopher. As such, it should not be confused with the many abridgements that omit key sections.
The book presents lucid descriptions of human mental activity, with detailed considerations of the stream of thought, consciousness, time perception, memory, imagination, emotions, reason, abnormal phenomena, and similar topics. In its course it takes into...
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Lisa Feldman BarrettA wonderful summary of what was known and what questions were being asked at the dawn of psychology as a science in the 19th century. (Source)

Susan BlackmoreOut of all the books I own, this is my absolute treasure. (Source)

Charles FernyhoughAn extraordinary work and compulsory reading for psychology students, even though the book is over a hundred years old. (Source)

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3

Stumbling on Happiness

• Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? • Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? • Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? • Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it? In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel... more

Jonathan HaidtHe’s one of the funniest people, certainly in psychology – he’s just endlessly witty, and reading it is like strapping yourself into a roller coaster. (Source)

Maria PopovaDan Gilbert "Stumbling Unhappiness" should be required reading for every human being. (Source)

Lisa Feldman BarrettOne of the ideas in this book is that minds are predictive, not reactive. It feels to us like we just react to the things that are happening to us, but in fact our brains are constantly guessing what’s going to happen in the next moment. Dan’s book was one of the first books that really took on this idea of prediction – which is, I would say, one of the great innovations in the last decade or two... (Source)

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4

David DeSteno's Emotional Success is an exploration of harnessing the practical power of using positive emotion to impact decision making. Current models promote suppressing emotion and using willpower as a means of self-control which, DeSteno argues, is not viable in the long term. With comparisons to well-known studies and a balance of hard research and popular culture examples, Emotional Success calls for a paradigm shift in the way in which we talk about the effect of responding emotionally.

Presented in four sections that pull together cutting-edge research from...

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Recommended by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Lewis Smith, and 2 others.

Lisa Feldman BarrettFull of real, scientifically backed advice that can be helpful to people.I love scientific findings that cause me to question my own beliefs and values. (Source)

Lewis SmithI'm listening to Emotional Success by David DeSteno. I'm hoping to use some of the ideas to help customers of my weight loss app stick to their targets and lose more weight. (Source)

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5

Middlesex

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license...records my first name simply as Cal."

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days...
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Recommended by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Alex Stojkovic, and 2 others.

Lisa Feldman BarrettEugenides does a really nice job of illustrating the complexity of emotional life, the emotional life that doesn’t necessarily fall into neat categories. (Source)

Alex StojkovicI don’t. But I would. Books love to be used up. (Related: Middlesex is the best book I read in 2019. If you’re look… (Source)

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