{"id":75445,"date":"2022-08-13T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-13T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=75445"},"modified":"2022-08-16T16:01:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T20:01:25","slug":"understand-other-peoples-feelings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understand-other-peoples-feelings\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Other People’s Feelings: The Myths & Truths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How can you better understand other people’s feelings? What are the benefits of empathizing with others? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to understand other people’s feelings, you need to first understand your own emotions, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett. Barrett is a neuroscientist and psychologist who has devoted herself to deconstructing old theories of emotions to create a new, more accurate theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read on to learn the myths and truths Barrett has identified about understanding other people’s feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Barrett: How to Understand Other People’s Feelings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to understanding other people\u2019s emotions, Barrett emphasizes that our perceptions of others\u2019 emotions are just guesses, which are accurate only when they match the other person\u2019s experience. People are better able to communicate and understand other people’s feelings when they are in sync<\/strong>, meaning they share a cultural background or past experiences, and their nonverbal behaviors coordinate. Two people can also \u201cco-construct\u201d emotions depending on the words they choose. For example, if a parent asks a child, \u201cAre you upset?\u201d instead of \u201cHow are you feeling?\u201d they influence the likelihood that the child will experience a negative emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Myths: Facial Expressions & Physiological Changes Reveal Feelings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It’s a myth that specific emotions correspond with specific, singular facial expressions<\/strong>, according to Barrett. It\u2019s long been thought that you can understand what other people are feeling solely by looking at their facial expressions\u2014a smile means happiness, a frown means sadness, and so on. But Barrett points out that people move their faces in many different ways when experiencing the same type of emotion; they also move their faces in the same way when experiencing different emotions. For example, a person experiencing joy could smile, cry, or shout; a grimace could mean anger, disgust, surprise, or annoyance, to name just a few. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the same token, says Barrett, emotions do not display \u201csignature\u201d physiological changes<\/strong>, such as an increased heart rate when someone is experiencing fear. When trying to understand other people’s feelings, it’s important to know that the same physiological state can mean different things: An increased heart rate can mean sadness, excitement, elation, or can even be a symptom of a heart attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Barrett acknowledges that physiological changes are an important aspect of emotions, but she contends that individual emotions can\u2019t be pegged to specific patterns of physical changes in your body. Some studies reach the opposite conclusion. One goes so far as to find that making facial expressions that represent various emotions\u2014as opposed to actually experiencing the emotions\u2014can itself elicit distinct patterns of physiological changes<\/a>, such as changes in heart rate, skin temperature, and skin conductance.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Truth? Your “Emotional Vocabulary” Helps You Understand People’s Feelings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The traditional view of emotions is that the responsibility for understanding them lies with the perceiver<\/strong> because emotions are supposedly universally displayed. Under the theory of constructed emotion, <\/strong>if you want your emotions to be understood, you have a responsibility to describe them accurately and transmit clear cues, so other people aren\u2019t just guessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand other people’s feelings, develop a rich set of emotion concepts. <\/strong>Being versed in a large number of specific emotion concepts and able to differentiate precisely between them is called emotional granularity<\/a><\/strong>. If you have high emotional granularity, it means that rather than just identifying that you feel \u201cbad,\u201d you\u2019re able to construct and identify a variety of more specific emotion concepts such as angry, grumpy, aggravated, annoyed, gloomy, and sad, and apply those concepts to what you could be feeling in the moment. Studies show that people with high emotional granularity can predict and categorize sensations more efficiently<\/strong>, so they are better able to balance their body budgets and tailor their actions to fit their environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some studies, people who could distinguish more finely between unpleasant emotions were 30% more flexible when regulating their emotions, less likely to drink excessively when stressed, and less likely to retaliate aggressively against someone who\u2019d hurt them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett identifies a variety of ways to increase your emotional granularity to better understand other people’s feelings<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n