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3.72 AVERAGE
I saw this book at Green Apple a couple years ago and the subtitle says: "How feelings shape our thinking." In my life coaching program, we learn that our thoughts create our feelings. So I wanted to see what this book presented in the opposite direction: feelings shape thoughts. Mostly, I still think that our thoughts create our feelings and that it's usually harder to know what we're thinking and easier to feel an emotional reaction more quickly. But there IS a thought in between what happens and how we feel. It just happens so fast that we think it was the circumstance that caused our feelings.
In the book, he actually talks about a strategy to choose what feeling we want to feel; and it's by thinking different thoughts about the circumstances! (Reappraisal.) So that kind of proves the point. But I can see how emotions can possibly influence our thinking in other ways, like what he mentions about the fear of fire. We will use our kitchen stoves more carefully because we're scared of burning down the house. Fear of fire influences how we think about using the stove.
“Rooted in both our knowledge and our past experience, emotion changes the way we think about our present circumstances and future prospects, often in subtle but consequential ways. Much of our understanding of how that works has come from advances in just the last decade or so, during which there has been an unparalleled explosion of research in the field. This book is about that revolution in our understanding of human feelings.” pg. xi-xii
“The moral of this pair of stories is not that emotions help or impede effective thinking but rather that emotions affect thinking: our emotional state influences our mental calculations as much as the objective data or circumstances we are pondering. As we’ll see, that is usually for the best. It is the exception and not the rule when the effect of emotion proves counterproductive.” pg. 6-7
“Thinking in an anxious state, scientists have found, leads to a pessimistic cognitive bias; when an anxious brain processes ambiguous information, it tends to choose the more pessimistic from among the likely interpretations. Your brain becomes overactive in perceiving threats and tends to predict dire outcomes when faced with uncertainty. It’s easy to understand why brains might be designed that way; being in a punishing environment, one would be wise to interpret ambiguous data as being more threatening, or less desirable, than one might if the surroundings were safe and pleasant.” pg. 8
“Each of our emotions, when it occurs, alters our thinking in a manner that fulfills some evolutionary purpose. Our parental love is as surely a cog in the machine of human life as is mating anxiety in the life of the ruddy duck. That we love our children because evolution has manipulated us to do so doesn’t diminish that love. It merely reveals the origin of that gift that so enriches our lives.” pg. 15
“Matters of the heart are the most important matters, and the most difficult to decipher. The new science of emotion has expanded our self-knowledge. We now know that emotion is profoundly integrated into the neural circuits of our brains, inseparable from our circuits for ‘rational’ thought. We could live without the ability to reason, but we would be completely dysfunctional if we couldn’t feel. Emotion is a part of the mental machinery we share with all higher animals, but even more than rationality its role in our behavior is what sets us apart from them.” pg. 23
There’s a story about the author’s father following an instinctive reaction to his surroundings that didn’t feel right to him that saved his life (pg. 40-41). The author explains this as part of core affect. So did that mean that his colleagues didn’t have the same instinctive reaction to their surroundings? Does that mean that only some people have that instinct? Or did those colleagues ignore their instinct and the author’s father is the only one that followed it? The story made it seem like the author’s father was special in some way and that his colleagues were not, they did it wrong. But if we all have this instinct, I guess it means whether we listen to it or not.
“We all react differently, at different times, to the same situation, and that difference in our response is often due to the hidden influence of core affect. Understanding the power of core affect is thus an important part of gaining perspective on how you react to others, and on how they treat you.” pg. 48 [No, it's just based on the different thoughts people are thinking about the circumstance.]
“A sophisticated system of nerves sometimes called our ‘second brain,’ the enteric nervous system regulates and runs throughout our gastrointestinal tract. It has only recently been studied in detail, but the ‘second brain’ nickname is well deserved because the enteric nervous system can make its own ‘decisions’ and operate independently of our brain. It even employs the same neurotransmitters. For example, 95 percent of our serotonin is in our gastrointestinal tract, not in our brain. But though our enteric nervous system can operate independently, it, and our entire gastrointestinal tract, are intimately connected to our brain and central nervous system. So the idea in popular culture that our gut is closely tied to our mental state has a strong basis in science.
The connection between gut and brain is so important it has a scientific name: the gut-brain axis. It is through the gut-brain axis that our gastrointestinal system exerts its outsized influence on our core affect.” pg. 50-51
“As you go through life, your brain is constantly making those immediate predictions, preparing you to take action if necessary, and one of the key ingredients in those calculations is your core affect. For while your senses provide information about your circumstances, it is your core affect that provides data about the state of your body.” pg. 57
“The goal of mastering your core affect is best achieved by monitoring it, which will enable you to recognize how being cold or tired or hungry or hurting might be having an impact on you and how the same conditions might also be affecting those you interact with. Once you become aware, you can make a conscious effort to avoid situations analogous to that of the parole officers, in which you make bad decisions or have bad personal interactions that could have been avoided.” pg. 63
“Recall that fear is similar to anxiety but arises as a reaction to a concrete and present threat rather than the anticipation of a possible future danger. It is not a surprise, then, that fear exerts a similar effect on our mental calculations: as you interpret your sensory input, you assign higher than normal probabilities to alarming possibilities. Walking down that dark street, you wonder, is that the sound of footsteps behind me? Such questions now dominate your thinking.” pg. 74
“What Kamal didn’t know was that his chances of being granted parole were far less contingent on his actions over the past five years than on a condition that was seemingly irrelevant—the time at which his case was heard. Because his was the last case of the morning session, the chances that he’d be granted parole were virtually nil.” pg. 59 [This is so messed up. Why haven’t they figured out a system to prevent this from happening yet?]
“Humans evolved in small social groups and had to continually engage in both cooperative and antagonistic interactions. In that context, an individual’s anger creates incentives for others to appease him. In the case of our ancestors, the ever-present threat behind an episode of anger was aggression. Because stronger individuals had more to gain by fighting than weaker ones, and presented a more credible threat, one would expect that among our ancient ancestors stronger men angered more easily than the weak. And indeed, studies show that that is true even today. The correlation is much weaker for women, who are typically less inclined to fight.” pg. 75
“But a lack of social emotion does often lead psychopaths to disregard social norms and exhibit a pattern of antisocial, immoral, and destructive behavior. We’d all behave like that if not for our social emotions, and so evolution was wise to bestow them.” pg. 81
“States of positive emotion, Fredrickson observed, generally have the effect of encouraging a certain amount of risk. They are modes of thought that broaden our perspective and, she theorized, motivated our ancestors to take advantage of their unthreatened moments—to explore, play, form social connections, take chances, and push into the unknown. That’s what their joy at the beautiful Arctic morning did for Shackleton’s group: it inspired them to push forward and trek on, eventually reaching the whaling station and then returning to save the comrades they’d left behind. That’s what positive emotion is for, Fredrickson argued: it gave our ancestors a survival advantage because it kept them moving forward to new and better places.” pg. 87
“Research shows that happy people are more creative, open to new information, and flexible and efficient in their thinking. Happiness, studies suggest, has the effect of encouraging you to push your limits and to be open to whatever comes your way. It also creates the urge to think outside the box, to explore and invent, and to be playful.” pg. 87-88
“The researchers theorized that the rats became obsessed because the accumbens played a role in their feelings of emotional pleasure. It seemed that, just as Heath had believed, the rat brains had a pleasure center and that feelings of pleasure motivated the rats even more than their survival drive. The scientists began to investigate which other brain areas would inspire self-stimulation. They uncovered several, running along the brain’s midline and connected by a massive bundle of nerve fibers, all parts of what we today call the reward system.” pg. 117-118
Rube Goldberg machines - sort of like the game Mouse Trap back in the day.
“Berridge theorized that in our reward system there is a distinction between liking something and the motivation to seek it, which he called ‘wanting.’ We tend to want what we enjoy, but, he asked, is that connection a logical necessity? Can you enjoy something but not have any motivation to obtain it?” pg. 124
“That’s what Berridge’s experiments led him to realize about his rats: liking—that is, pleasure—and wanting/desiring—that is, motivation—are produced by two distinct but interconnected subsystems within our reward system. Berridge speculated that humans are built that way, too. We have a ‘pleasure register’ in our reward system—our ‘liking’ circuit—but we have to be programmed to pursue what we like. And so we have a separate ‘wanting’ circuitry in our reward system to determine whether we are motivated enough to pursue any particular instance of pleasure.” pg. 124
“That was strong evidence that wanting and liking operated independently in the brain, but Berridge went even further. He found that the liking subsystem employs opioids and endocannabinoids—the natural brain versions of heroin and marijuana—as its neurotransmitters. That’s why taking those drugs amplifies sensory pleasure: they are the real ‘pleasure molecules’ of the brain. And when Berridge blocked those neurotransmitters, his rats behaved as he hypothesized: they no longer appeared to like their sugar water meals, but because their dopamine-based circuits were intact, they still wanted them.” pg. 125
“The wanting system is more fundamental than the system for liking. It is found in all species of animals, even the simplest and most primitive. It evolved before the liking system, and in fact in the most ancient animals there is no liking system; wants are driven strictly by survival needs such as food and water. That’s possible because creatures can survive if programmed to want whatever it is that they need, without ever having the experience of liking it.” pg. 127
“If the reverse were true—if an organism were programmed to like what it needed without wanting it—it would not be motivated to fulfill its needs, and it would die. But the liking system present in the higher forms of animal life does serve a very useful purpose. It frees us from having our wants and desires directly trigger action. Instead, wanting is stimulated by liking, but not automatically. Before activating our wanting circuits, our brain takes liking into account, as well as other factors. For example, food is a basic need, and we are programmed to like it. Yet when we see a piece of alluring food, rather than mindlessly devouring it, we may pause while our brains balance the pleasure of eating with various nutritional and aesthetic considerations.” pg. 128
“The subjective pleasurable effects of the drug are decreased due to the development of tolerance. As a result, the longer the addiction, the more the drug is wanted and the less it is liked.” pg. 132
“But before we can achieve any goal, whether great or small, we must be determined to act, and that is the role of our emotional salience network.” pg. 154
“What rules Jim’s life is shame—a feeling of distress or humiliation that results from making a negative evaluation about yourself and is associated with a desire to hide or escape. It is one of the most harmful emotions, and for protection Jim has created a narcissistic shell, a constellation of primitive defense mechanisms that enable him to avoid becoming aware of that intolerable unconscious view of himself.” pg. 158
“All emotions are reactions to a circumstance or situation. They arise, they guide our thinking, and then they dissipate. [not if you have the Model!] But Jim is hyper susceptible to shame, so even minor events such as a bit of gentle criticism of which most of us would take little heed can elicit in Jim a strong shame reaction. As a result, he is so often in a shame state that it almost forms an undercurrent for his life, coloring everything he does.” pg. 159
“Your emotional profile is a description of what it takes to trigger each particular emotion, how swiftly it builds, how intense it tends to be, and how long it generally takes to dissipate. Psychologists use the terms ‘threshold,’ ‘latency to peak,’ ‘magnitude,’ and ‘recovery.’ These aspects vary among individuals and for each person they depend on the specific emotion in question, in particular whether it is a positive or negative one.” pg. 159
“The key to epigenetics is the fact that although genetic traits are encoded in an organism’s DNA, for them to appear in the organism, the relevant section of DNA has to be activated. Scientists used to think that was automatic, but we now know that sections of DNA can be turned on or off and that this is often determined by our environment or our experiences. We may be stuck with our genes for life, but we are not stuck with the effect of those genes. They can often be modified. Epigenetics is the study of the process through which our environment and our experiences can alter the effects of our DNA.” pg. 162
“Anxiety is evoked by the perception of a threat. In contrast to fear, which is a response to a specific, identifiable, and imminent danger, anxiety comes from the perception of potential and unpredictable threat, one that may pose a low probability of actual harm, or be vague or ambiguous, or not have a clear source. It is more common, therefore, that people live in a state of chronic anxiety than chronic fear. From an evolutionary perspective, both emotions help shield us from harm, but in very different ways. Fear stimulates a defensive reaction—the fight-or-flight response—and it quickly subsides as the threat disappears. Anxiety is associated with less direct coping methods and can persist for some time. It protects you by promoting the anticipation of, and preparation for, a potentially harmful situation.” pg. 172
“Epictetus wrote, ‘A man’s master is he who is able to confirm or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns.’ If you depend on no one except yourself to satisfy your desires, you will have no master other than yourself and you will be free. Stoic philosophy was about that—taking charge of your life, learning to work on those things that are within your power to accomplish or change and not to waste energy on things you cannot.
In particular, the Stoics warned against reacting emotionally to what is outside your control. Often, Epictetus argued, it’s not our circumstances that get us down but rather the judgments we make about them.” pg. 190
“. . . the executive network structures in our prefrontal cortex exerting influence over the many subcortical structures associated with emotion. When we successfully orchestrate that, we achieve emotion regulation.” pg. 192
“This is how emotions work. Making sense of what just happened is one of the phases your brain goes through as an emotional reaction develops. Psychologists call it ‘appraisal.’ Some appraisal goes on in your unconscious mind, but it also occurs on the conscious level, and that’s where you can intervene: If there are different ways of looking at something, which lead to different emotions, why not train yourself to think in the way that leads to the emotion you want?” pg. 192
“This is how emotions work. Making sense of what just happened is one of the phases your brain goes through as an emotional reaction develops. Psychologists call it ‘appraisal.’ Some appraisal goes on in your unconscious mind, but it also occurs on the conscious level, and that’s where you can intervene: If there are different ways of looking at something, which lead to different emotions, why not train yourself to think in the way that leads to the emotion you want?” pg. 192
“Research on reappraisal has shown that we have the power to choose the meanings we assign to circumstances, events, and experiences in our lives. . . . Even if the negative appraisals won’t completely dissipate, the positive ones add new possibilities to your thinking, moderating the tendency to look at things in a negative way.” pg. 193
“Our world, wherever and however we live, presents us with a constant set of challenges. To overcome them, we rely on our senses to detect our surroundings and our thinking to process that information in light of our knowledge and experience. A principal way in which that knowledge and past experience enters our thinking is through emotion. You might not engage in a lot of rational analysis regarding the possibility of starting a fire each time you grill meat in your kitchen, but a tinge of fear of fire always colors your thought and actions around the stove, coaxing you toward safer decisions.” pg. 201
Book: borrowed from NB Branch.
In the book, he actually talks about a strategy to choose what feeling we want to feel; and it's by thinking different thoughts about the circumstances! (Reappraisal.) So that kind of proves the point. But I can see how emotions can possibly influence our thinking in other ways, like what he mentions about the fear of fire. We will use our kitchen stoves more carefully because we're scared of burning down the house. Fear of fire influences how we think about using the stove.
“Rooted in both our knowledge and our past experience, emotion changes the way we think about our present circumstances and future prospects, often in subtle but consequential ways. Much of our understanding of how that works has come from advances in just the last decade or so, during which there has been an unparalleled explosion of research in the field. This book is about that revolution in our understanding of human feelings.” pg. xi-xii
“The moral of this pair of stories is not that emotions help or impede effective thinking but rather that emotions affect thinking: our emotional state influences our mental calculations as much as the objective data or circumstances we are pondering. As we’ll see, that is usually for the best. It is the exception and not the rule when the effect of emotion proves counterproductive.” pg. 6-7
“Thinking in an anxious state, scientists have found, leads to a pessimistic cognitive bias; when an anxious brain processes ambiguous information, it tends to choose the more pessimistic from among the likely interpretations. Your brain becomes overactive in perceiving threats and tends to predict dire outcomes when faced with uncertainty. It’s easy to understand why brains might be designed that way; being in a punishing environment, one would be wise to interpret ambiguous data as being more threatening, or less desirable, than one might if the surroundings were safe and pleasant.” pg. 8
“Each of our emotions, when it occurs, alters our thinking in a manner that fulfills some evolutionary purpose. Our parental love is as surely a cog in the machine of human life as is mating anxiety in the life of the ruddy duck. That we love our children because evolution has manipulated us to do so doesn’t diminish that love. It merely reveals the origin of that gift that so enriches our lives.” pg. 15
“Matters of the heart are the most important matters, and the most difficult to decipher. The new science of emotion has expanded our self-knowledge. We now know that emotion is profoundly integrated into the neural circuits of our brains, inseparable from our circuits for ‘rational’ thought. We could live without the ability to reason, but we would be completely dysfunctional if we couldn’t feel. Emotion is a part of the mental machinery we share with all higher animals, but even more than rationality its role in our behavior is what sets us apart from them.” pg. 23
There’s a story about the author’s father following an instinctive reaction to his surroundings that didn’t feel right to him that saved his life (pg. 40-41). The author explains this as part of core affect. So did that mean that his colleagues didn’t have the same instinctive reaction to their surroundings? Does that mean that only some people have that instinct? Or did those colleagues ignore their instinct and the author’s father is the only one that followed it? The story made it seem like the author’s father was special in some way and that his colleagues were not, they did it wrong. But if we all have this instinct, I guess it means whether we listen to it or not.
“We all react differently, at different times, to the same situation, and that difference in our response is often due to the hidden influence of core affect. Understanding the power of core affect is thus an important part of gaining perspective on how you react to others, and on how they treat you.” pg. 48 [No, it's just based on the different thoughts people are thinking about the circumstance.]
“A sophisticated system of nerves sometimes called our ‘second brain,’ the enteric nervous system regulates and runs throughout our gastrointestinal tract. It has only recently been studied in detail, but the ‘second brain’ nickname is well deserved because the enteric nervous system can make its own ‘decisions’ and operate independently of our brain. It even employs the same neurotransmitters. For example, 95 percent of our serotonin is in our gastrointestinal tract, not in our brain. But though our enteric nervous system can operate independently, it, and our entire gastrointestinal tract, are intimately connected to our brain and central nervous system. So the idea in popular culture that our gut is closely tied to our mental state has a strong basis in science.
The connection between gut and brain is so important it has a scientific name: the gut-brain axis. It is through the gut-brain axis that our gastrointestinal system exerts its outsized influence on our core affect.” pg. 50-51
“As you go through life, your brain is constantly making those immediate predictions, preparing you to take action if necessary, and one of the key ingredients in those calculations is your core affect. For while your senses provide information about your circumstances, it is your core affect that provides data about the state of your body.” pg. 57
“The goal of mastering your core affect is best achieved by monitoring it, which will enable you to recognize how being cold or tired or hungry or hurting might be having an impact on you and how the same conditions might also be affecting those you interact with. Once you become aware, you can make a conscious effort to avoid situations analogous to that of the parole officers, in which you make bad decisions or have bad personal interactions that could have been avoided.” pg. 63
“Recall that fear is similar to anxiety but arises as a reaction to a concrete and present threat rather than the anticipation of a possible future danger. It is not a surprise, then, that fear exerts a similar effect on our mental calculations: as you interpret your sensory input, you assign higher than normal probabilities to alarming possibilities. Walking down that dark street, you wonder, is that the sound of footsteps behind me? Such questions now dominate your thinking.” pg. 74
“What Kamal didn’t know was that his chances of being granted parole were far less contingent on his actions over the past five years than on a condition that was seemingly irrelevant—the time at which his case was heard. Because his was the last case of the morning session, the chances that he’d be granted parole were virtually nil.” pg. 59 [This is so messed up. Why haven’t they figured out a system to prevent this from happening yet?]
“Humans evolved in small social groups and had to continually engage in both cooperative and antagonistic interactions. In that context, an individual’s anger creates incentives for others to appease him. In the case of our ancestors, the ever-present threat behind an episode of anger was aggression. Because stronger individuals had more to gain by fighting than weaker ones, and presented a more credible threat, one would expect that among our ancient ancestors stronger men angered more easily than the weak. And indeed, studies show that that is true even today. The correlation is much weaker for women, who are typically less inclined to fight.” pg. 75
“But a lack of social emotion does often lead psychopaths to disregard social norms and exhibit a pattern of antisocial, immoral, and destructive behavior. We’d all behave like that if not for our social emotions, and so evolution was wise to bestow them.” pg. 81
“States of positive emotion, Fredrickson observed, generally have the effect of encouraging a certain amount of risk. They are modes of thought that broaden our perspective and, she theorized, motivated our ancestors to take advantage of their unthreatened moments—to explore, play, form social connections, take chances, and push into the unknown. That’s what their joy at the beautiful Arctic morning did for Shackleton’s group: it inspired them to push forward and trek on, eventually reaching the whaling station and then returning to save the comrades they’d left behind. That’s what positive emotion is for, Fredrickson argued: it gave our ancestors a survival advantage because it kept them moving forward to new and better places.” pg. 87
“Research shows that happy people are more creative, open to new information, and flexible and efficient in their thinking. Happiness, studies suggest, has the effect of encouraging you to push your limits and to be open to whatever comes your way. It also creates the urge to think outside the box, to explore and invent, and to be playful.” pg. 87-88
“The researchers theorized that the rats became obsessed because the accumbens played a role in their feelings of emotional pleasure. It seemed that, just as Heath had believed, the rat brains had a pleasure center and that feelings of pleasure motivated the rats even more than their survival drive. The scientists began to investigate which other brain areas would inspire self-stimulation. They uncovered several, running along the brain’s midline and connected by a massive bundle of nerve fibers, all parts of what we today call the reward system.” pg. 117-118
Rube Goldberg machines - sort of like the game Mouse Trap back in the day.
“Berridge theorized that in our reward system there is a distinction between liking something and the motivation to seek it, which he called ‘wanting.’ We tend to want what we enjoy, but, he asked, is that connection a logical necessity? Can you enjoy something but not have any motivation to obtain it?” pg. 124
“That’s what Berridge’s experiments led him to realize about his rats: liking—that is, pleasure—and wanting/desiring—that is, motivation—are produced by two distinct but interconnected subsystems within our reward system. Berridge speculated that humans are built that way, too. We have a ‘pleasure register’ in our reward system—our ‘liking’ circuit—but we have to be programmed to pursue what we like. And so we have a separate ‘wanting’ circuitry in our reward system to determine whether we are motivated enough to pursue any particular instance of pleasure.” pg. 124
“That was strong evidence that wanting and liking operated independently in the brain, but Berridge went even further. He found that the liking subsystem employs opioids and endocannabinoids—the natural brain versions of heroin and marijuana—as its neurotransmitters. That’s why taking those drugs amplifies sensory pleasure: they are the real ‘pleasure molecules’ of the brain. And when Berridge blocked those neurotransmitters, his rats behaved as he hypothesized: they no longer appeared to like their sugar water meals, but because their dopamine-based circuits were intact, they still wanted them.” pg. 125
“The wanting system is more fundamental than the system for liking. It is found in all species of animals, even the simplest and most primitive. It evolved before the liking system, and in fact in the most ancient animals there is no liking system; wants are driven strictly by survival needs such as food and water. That’s possible because creatures can survive if programmed to want whatever it is that they need, without ever having the experience of liking it.” pg. 127
“If the reverse were true—if an organism were programmed to like what it needed without wanting it—it would not be motivated to fulfill its needs, and it would die. But the liking system present in the higher forms of animal life does serve a very useful purpose. It frees us from having our wants and desires directly trigger action. Instead, wanting is stimulated by liking, but not automatically. Before activating our wanting circuits, our brain takes liking into account, as well as other factors. For example, food is a basic need, and we are programmed to like it. Yet when we see a piece of alluring food, rather than mindlessly devouring it, we may pause while our brains balance the pleasure of eating with various nutritional and aesthetic considerations.” pg. 128
“The subjective pleasurable effects of the drug are decreased due to the development of tolerance. As a result, the longer the addiction, the more the drug is wanted and the less it is liked.” pg. 132
“But before we can achieve any goal, whether great or small, we must be determined to act, and that is the role of our emotional salience network.” pg. 154
“What rules Jim’s life is shame—a feeling of distress or humiliation that results from making a negative evaluation about yourself and is associated with a desire to hide or escape. It is one of the most harmful emotions, and for protection Jim has created a narcissistic shell, a constellation of primitive defense mechanisms that enable him to avoid becoming aware of that intolerable unconscious view of himself.” pg. 158
“All emotions are reactions to a circumstance or situation. They arise, they guide our thinking, and then they dissipate. [not if you have the Model!] But Jim is hyper susceptible to shame, so even minor events such as a bit of gentle criticism of which most of us would take little heed can elicit in Jim a strong shame reaction. As a result, he is so often in a shame state that it almost forms an undercurrent for his life, coloring everything he does.” pg. 159
“Your emotional profile is a description of what it takes to trigger each particular emotion, how swiftly it builds, how intense it tends to be, and how long it generally takes to dissipate. Psychologists use the terms ‘threshold,’ ‘latency to peak,’ ‘magnitude,’ and ‘recovery.’ These aspects vary among individuals and for each person they depend on the specific emotion in question, in particular whether it is a positive or negative one.” pg. 159
“The key to epigenetics is the fact that although genetic traits are encoded in an organism’s DNA, for them to appear in the organism, the relevant section of DNA has to be activated. Scientists used to think that was automatic, but we now know that sections of DNA can be turned on or off and that this is often determined by our environment or our experiences. We may be stuck with our genes for life, but we are not stuck with the effect of those genes. They can often be modified. Epigenetics is the study of the process through which our environment and our experiences can alter the effects of our DNA.” pg. 162
“Anxiety is evoked by the perception of a threat. In contrast to fear, which is a response to a specific, identifiable, and imminent danger, anxiety comes from the perception of potential and unpredictable threat, one that may pose a low probability of actual harm, or be vague or ambiguous, or not have a clear source. It is more common, therefore, that people live in a state of chronic anxiety than chronic fear. From an evolutionary perspective, both emotions help shield us from harm, but in very different ways. Fear stimulates a defensive reaction—the fight-or-flight response—and it quickly subsides as the threat disappears. Anxiety is associated with less direct coping methods and can persist for some time. It protects you by promoting the anticipation of, and preparation for, a potentially harmful situation.” pg. 172
“Epictetus wrote, ‘A man’s master is he who is able to confirm or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns.’ If you depend on no one except yourself to satisfy your desires, you will have no master other than yourself and you will be free. Stoic philosophy was about that—taking charge of your life, learning to work on those things that are within your power to accomplish or change and not to waste energy on things you cannot.
In particular, the Stoics warned against reacting emotionally to what is outside your control. Often, Epictetus argued, it’s not our circumstances that get us down but rather the judgments we make about them.” pg. 190
“. . . the executive network structures in our prefrontal cortex exerting influence over the many subcortical structures associated with emotion. When we successfully orchestrate that, we achieve emotion regulation.” pg. 192
“This is how emotions work. Making sense of what just happened is one of the phases your brain goes through as an emotional reaction develops. Psychologists call it ‘appraisal.’ Some appraisal goes on in your unconscious mind, but it also occurs on the conscious level, and that’s where you can intervene: If there are different ways of looking at something, which lead to different emotions, why not train yourself to think in the way that leads to the emotion you want?” pg. 192
“This is how emotions work. Making sense of what just happened is one of the phases your brain goes through as an emotional reaction develops. Psychologists call it ‘appraisal.’ Some appraisal goes on in your unconscious mind, but it also occurs on the conscious level, and that’s where you can intervene: If there are different ways of looking at something, which lead to different emotions, why not train yourself to think in the way that leads to the emotion you want?” pg. 192
“Research on reappraisal has shown that we have the power to choose the meanings we assign to circumstances, events, and experiences in our lives. . . . Even if the negative appraisals won’t completely dissipate, the positive ones add new possibilities to your thinking, moderating the tendency to look at things in a negative way.” pg. 193
“Our world, wherever and however we live, presents us with a constant set of challenges. To overcome them, we rely on our senses to detect our surroundings and our thinking to process that information in light of our knowledge and experience. A principal way in which that knowledge and past experience enters our thinking is through emotion. You might not engage in a lot of rational analysis regarding the possibility of starting a fire each time you grill meat in your kitchen, but a tinge of fear of fire always colors your thought and actions around the stove, coaxing you toward safer decisions.” pg. 201
Book: borrowed from NB Branch.
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
It wasn't as science-forward as I thought it'd be, and has a lot of personal anecdotes and stories (whether they are relevant or not to the part of the book can be debated). I think the scientific facts and emotional stories are good at explaining what emotions do to us and how we can better control them if you haven't already taken therapy and are looking to become more emotionally aware.
Meh. This book was all around very meh. The most engaging part was the last 10 minutes where Mlodinow speaks to making tough decisions in relation to his mother.
I could see this book being useful to people who a) have never before considered that emotions are relevant to our behaviour and b) have considered it but have convinced themselves that they are somehow capable of being Purely Rational (a myth). The note I made in relation to this point while reading is: "Yea this is really reading like the target audience is the Rational Man; i.e. the kind of person who wholeheartedly believes that they are the exception to the rule and are capable of thinking in a way that is entirely void of emotion".
What blew my mind the most is that, apparently, the science of emotion is a new thing and has only really been explored with great interest in the last decade or so. The author explains that Darwinian thinking around emotions is what we believed for so long; i.e. emotions are an evolutionary byproduct that we don't really need (yikes).
It really seems to me that the underlying point to this book is to acknowledge and discuss the fact that humans vastly underestimate how much our emotions affect us all of the time. Which isn't news to me but I guess it is for a lot of people?
Idk. Maybe suggest this book the next time you come across someone who thinks they're completely rational but be aware that it's a very surface level look, most of the anecdotes are boring and basic at best, and there is very little nuance around a) neurodivergence and b) societal influences on the way we think & our capacity to emotionally regulate.
I could see this book being useful to people who a) have never before considered that emotions are relevant to our behaviour and b) have considered it but have convinced themselves that they are somehow capable of being Purely Rational (a myth). The note I made in relation to this point while reading is: "Yea this is really reading like the target audience is the Rational Man; i.e. the kind of person who wholeheartedly believes that they are the exception to the rule and are capable of thinking in a way that is entirely void of emotion".
What blew my mind the most is that, apparently, the science of emotion is a new thing and has only really been explored with great interest in the last decade or so. The author explains that Darwinian thinking around emotions is what we believed for so long; i.e. emotions are an evolutionary byproduct that we don't really need (yikes).
It really seems to me that the underlying point to this book is to acknowledge and discuss the fact that humans vastly underestimate how much our emotions affect us all of the time. Which isn't news to me but I guess it is for a lot of people?
Idk. Maybe suggest this book the next time you come across someone who thinks they're completely rational but be aware that it's a very surface level look, most of the anecdotes are boring and basic at best, and there is very little nuance around a) neurodivergence and b) societal influences on the way we think & our capacity to emotionally regulate.
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
I enjoy and appreciate books that help me understand my body and mind more, and this was certainly that. A lot of the information was not necessarily new to me, but provided a good breadth on understanding emotion - both the chemical nature and evolutionary background of it. I especially appreciated the Emotional Inventory section of the book, allowing a guided self examination of one’s emotions and a brief look into what that might mean and how to adjust it if desired. The audiobook was decent, but would recommend a print/ebook version for the inventory assessment.
A nice summary of the updated research on human emotions.
“Scientists now know emotion is profoundly integrated into the neural circuits of our brain, inseparable from our circuits for rational thoughts. We could live without the ability for reasons, but we would be completely dysfunctional if we couldn’t feel. Emotion is a part of the mental machinery we share with all higher animals, but even more than rationality its role in our behavior is what sets us apart from them.”
Some takeaways:
Chapter 3: The Mind-Body Connection: Two core body effects: negative and positive. Mindfulness meditation makes you aware of your core body effect. Emotions are tightly linked to our core body effect. Emotions arise without intentional effort. What used to be called “drives”, such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire, are now seen as emotions. Gut-brain connection is bi-directional. The separation of the brain and the body is artificial.
Chapter 5 Where Feelings Come From: The theory of emotional construction, at least to some extent. Emotion is not innate and hard-wired, or not always?
Chapter 6: motivation: wanting versus liking: neurological basis for the difference between wanting and liking. Patients suffering from addiction stop liking what they are addicted to but they keep wanting it. The discovery of the brain region that is in charge of motivation.
Chapter 7: Determination: aerobic exercises that boost your heart function can also help your general mental grit. Benefits of meditation: attention control, emotion regulation and to increase self-awareness.
Part III is Emotional Profile. The author has listed several questionnaires that would help you find out your own emotional profile.
“Scientists now know emotion is profoundly integrated into the neural circuits of our brain, inseparable from our circuits for rational thoughts. We could live without the ability for reasons, but we would be completely dysfunctional if we couldn’t feel. Emotion is a part of the mental machinery we share with all higher animals, but even more than rationality its role in our behavior is what sets us apart from them.”
Some takeaways:
Chapter 3: The Mind-Body Connection: Two core body effects: negative and positive. Mindfulness meditation makes you aware of your core body effect. Emotions are tightly linked to our core body effect. Emotions arise without intentional effort. What used to be called “drives”, such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire, are now seen as emotions. Gut-brain connection is bi-directional. The separation of the brain and the body is artificial.
Chapter 5 Where Feelings Come From: The theory of emotional construction, at least to some extent. Emotion is not innate and hard-wired, or not always?
Chapter 6: motivation: wanting versus liking: neurological basis for the difference between wanting and liking. Patients suffering from addiction stop liking what they are addicted to but they keep wanting it. The discovery of the brain region that is in charge of motivation.
Chapter 7: Determination: aerobic exercises that boost your heart function can also help your general mental grit. Benefits of meditation: attention control, emotion regulation and to increase self-awareness.
Part III is Emotional Profile. The author has listed several questionnaires that would help you find out your own emotional profile.
medium-paced
Interesting stuff, and an easy read. I would actually have liked a bit more - more science, more studies, etc. but I always do. This is a good start on the topic.
honestly so good. i learned so much abt the brain and psychology in general. it was very readable and accessible. highly recommend.