Lisa Feldman Barrett - Emotion Views

Emotion Views

Previous views on emotion take a natural kinds approach, assuming that a stimulus evokes a discrete causal mechanism in the brain and body, producing a unique, response signature that can be readily recognized by others. In this perspective, emotions are innate, and all people are born with the capacity to feel the same core set of emotions. Barrett’s lab has conducted major reviews of the scientific literature showing that the majority of the existing research does not support the natural kind view. Her conceptual-act model of emotion holds that emotions are not biological entities that form the building blocks of our experience. Instead, the model hypothesizes that emotions are constructed events that arise from the simultaneous combination of three more basic psychological primitives:

Core affect

An omnipresent, neurophysiological state described by two properties, hedonic valence and arousal, that can be consciously accessed.

Conceptualization (categorization)

The ability to automatically make meaning of sensory stimulation (from the world and/or the body) by bringing stored, situation-specific representations of categories (e.g., "anger") to bear.

Executive attention

Controlled attention, also referred to as "goal-directed," "top-down" or "endogenous" attention, that maintains or enhances the activation of some representations while suppressing others.

In the model, these psychological ingredients not only combine to create "emotions," but also are general ingredients of the mind, important for creating "memories," "thoughts," "beliefs," "perceptions," "attitudes," "the self," and so on.