How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

This brings us to one of the most challenging ideas in this book: you need an emotion concept in order to experience or perceive the associated emotion. It’s a requirement. Without a concept for “Fear,” you cannot experience fear. Without a concept for “Sadness,” you cannot perceive sadness in another person. You could learn the necessary concept, or you could construct it in the moment through conceptual combination, but your brain must be able to make that concept and predict with it. Otherwise, you will be experientially blind to that emotion. I realize this idea might sound counterintuitive, so let’s start with a few examples. You are probably unfamiliar with an emotion called liget. It’s a feeling of exuberant aggression experienced by a headhunting tribe from the Philippines, the Ilongot. Liget involves intense focus, passion, and energy while pursuing a hazardous challenge with a group of people who are competing against another group. The danger and energy instill a sense of togetherness and belonging. Liget is not just a mental state but a complex situation with social rules about which activities bring it on, when it is appropriate to feel, and how other people should treat you during an episode. To a member of the Ilongot tribe, liget is every bit as real an emotion as happiness and sadness are to you. Westerners surely do experience pleasant aggression. Athletes feel it in the heat of competition. Videogame players cultivate it during first-person shooter games. But these people are not experiencing liget with all its meaning, prescribed actions, body-budget changes, communication, and social influence unless they can construct “Liget” using conceptual combination. Liget is the whole conceptual package, and if your brain cannot make this concept, then you cannot experience liget, although you can experience parts of it: the pleasant, high arousal affect; the aggression; the thrill of pursuing a risky challenge; or the feeling of brother- or sisterhood that comes from being part of a group. Next, consider an emotion concept that’s more recently adopted by U.S. culture. In a recent meeting with my lab members, I learned that an acquaintance (call him Robert) failed in his bid to win a Nobel prize. Robert had treated me poorly in the past (which is polite scientist-speak for “he acted like an ass”), so when I heard the news, I have to admit that I had a complex emotional experience: I felt some empathy for Robert, plus a small measure of gratification about his misfortune, plus a large wave of guilt at my pettiness, as well as embarrassment that someone might discover my uncharitable feeling.

This brings us to one of the most challenging ideas in this book: you need an emotion concept in order to experience or perceive the associated emotion. It’s a requirement.