How We Infer Emotions from Facial Movements

We don't read emotions in facial expressions, but rather make inferences based on a combination of signals, including context. While there is feedback from the face to the brain, there is also a continuous conversation between the brain and the body.

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In this episode, my guest is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University who is a world expert in the science of emotions. She explains what emotions are and how the brain represents and integrates signals from our body and the environment around us to create our unique emotional states. We discuss the relationship between emotions and language, how our specificity of language impacts our emotional processing, the role of facial expressions in emotions, and how emotions relate to sleep, movement, nutrition and the building and reinforcement of social bonds. We also discuss actionable tools for how to regulate feelings of uncertainty and tools to better understand the emotional states of others. This episode ought to be of interest to anyone curious about the neuroscience and psychology underlying emotions and for those who seek to better understand themselves and relate to others and the world in richer, more adaptive ways.

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