{"id":75436,"date":"2022-08-15T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=75436"},"modified":"2022-08-16T16:01:36","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T20:01:36","slug":"innate-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/innate-emotions\/","title":{"rendered":"The Innate Emotions Illusion: You’re Not Born With Them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What does psychological research say about innate emotions? Why are innate emotions now considered to be an outdated concept? Where do your emotions actually come from? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her book, How Emotions Are Made<\/em>, Lisa Feldman Barrett analyzes and critiques outdated concepts of human emotions, developing a new theory based on neuroscience and her background in psychology. Barrett’s research shows that innate emotions are an outdated illusion of past experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read on to learn why innate emotions don’t exist and where emotions actually come from, according to Barrett. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Why Emotions Are Not Innate\u2014They\u2019re Constructed <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Myth:<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>Emotions are natural and innate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reality:<\/em><\/strong> Your brain makes emotions in the moment by applying the emotion concepts<\/strong> it\u2019s learned to sensory input. Your brain is guessing at the meaning of external and internal sensory input based on prior experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Feldman Barrett asserts that the brain takes in external sensory input from your environment, as well as internal sensory input about the state of your body, and tries to make sense of these sensations using emotion concepts\u2014not innate emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In essence, your brain is constantly trying to guess (predict) the meaning of sensory input, so it can determine how to budget your body\u2019s resources and what action to take next. To do so, your brain relies on past experiences, organized as emotion concepts. Rather than innate emotions, these emotion concepts function as mental explanations for what\u2019s going on inside and around you.<\/strong> If you didn\u2019t have concepts, all the sensory input you received from the word would just be meaningless noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Neurologists argue that smell can trigger memories and emotions<\/a> more than the other senses, likely because of the proximity between the olfactory bulb and the limbic system<\/a> (the part of the brain responsible for memory and emotion). The memories that arise from smell instantly relate to emotion. For example, if you have happy memories of spending time with your grandpa, who was a smoker, then the external input of cigarette smoke can elicit a positive emotion.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your infant brain doesn’t have innate emotions, rather it compresses the sensory input it receives, creating similarities out of differences to make concepts. It takes all of your past experiences with a particular emotion and categorizes them into emotion concepts such as \u201cjoy,\u201d \u201cexcitement,\u201d or \u201cdespair.\u201d Once you\u2019ve learned these concepts, your brain can run this process in reverse, expanding the similarities into differences to do what Barrett calls \u201cconstructing an instance of a concept,\u201d also known as predicting. All concepts that your brain makes are ways of regulating your body.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does psychological research say about innate emotions? Why are innate emotions now considered to be an outdated concept? Where do your emotions actually come from? In her book, How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett analyzes and critiques outdated concepts of human emotions, developing a new theory based on neuroscience and her background in psychology. Barrett’s research shows that innate emotions are an outdated illusion of past experiments. Read on to learn why innate emotions don’t exist and where emotions actually come from, according to Barrett.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":75603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,160],"tags":[714],"class_list":["post-75436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-science","tag-how-emotions-are-made","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Innate Emotions Illusion: You're Not Born With Them - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What are innate emotions and why does modern research say they don't exist? 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