I am known for being hard to read, to the point that friends complain that they can never tell what I’m thinking by looking at my face. But, says neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, it’s possible that they might remain confused even if my face were more expressive.
Barrett, a neuroscientist at Northeastern University, is the author of How Emotions Are Made. She argues that many of the key beliefs we have about emotions are wrong. It’s not true that we all feel the same things, that anyone can “read” other people’s faces, and it’s not true that emotions are things that happen to us.
The Verge spoke to Barrett about her new view of emotion, what this means for emotion-prediction startups, and whether we can feel an emotion if we don’t...
