Your Feelings Aren't Reactions. They're Predictions.

Listen to the Hidden Brain podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/20Gf4IAauFrfj7RBkjcWxh What if your emotions aren't reactions to the world, but your brain's best guesses about it? In this video, we explore what psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor at Northeastern University and author of How Emotions Are Made, discovered when she studied how the brain builds our feelings: why the flushed cheeks and racing heart she read as romantic attraction turned out to be the flu, how context shapes the emotions we see in other people's faces far more than the faces themselves, and what a toddler's "cranky fairy" chair reveals about learning to change the predictions that become our experience. Barrett's questions about emotion began in childhood, in a home where she was told again and again that she was responsible for other people's feelings. ____ Hidden Brain, hosted by me, Shankar Vedantam, is finally on YouTube! Like my podcast, this new video series will explore the unconscious patterns driving human behavior, our choices, and our relationships. ____ FIND HIDDEN BRAIN ONLINE Website: https://www.hiddenbrain.org/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiddenbrain/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenbrainshow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HiddenBrain/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hiddenbrain.bsky.social X: https://x.com/HiddenBrain Patreon/Hidden Brain+: https://www.patreon.com/HiddenBrain