1. Begin by reflecting on Soloman’s writing and argument style in comparison to Barrett’s. Do you find one to be more effective than the other? Why? Do you find one source more “believable” or “valid” than the other?

2. Barrett describes the term of “experientially blindness” on the top of page 26. She explains the term as a process in which your brain considers past experiences to make sense of your current ones. Through the comparison of past inputs and encounters, the brain attempts to familiarize itself with your present situation. When it is unable to, you face “experientially blindness.” If the construction of emotions is reliant on familiar concepts, does this imply we were born “experientially blind” to everything? Can you think of an example in a time in which you were aware of your own blindness? Perhaps a time you were aware of emotional construction taking place?

3. At the bottom of p.29 Barrett talks about the process of sensory input being transformed into concepts that gives meaning to your life. These concepts are influenced by the world around you. She uses the example of a stomach ache while sitting at the dinner table. This sensory input is then translated into to nausea, hunger, or mistrust. Can you think of any unpleasant sensation (think pain) that you associate to certain emotion only due to constructions? For example: May I not had found a headache to be unpleasant if pain was not constructed as such in our world?

4. Think of Barrett’s study in chapter 3. Her goal in conducting this study is to prove the importance of concepts in emotion formation. She attempts to prove this by setting up scenarios in which the participants lose a degree of their emotional concept knowledge. How meaningful do you believe the findings of this study to be? Did you find any shortcomings in the experiments? Were there any participants excluded from the study you think should have been included?

5. Barrett defines an emotion on page 30 as “Your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world” How much control, if any, do you believe you have in this process of construction? How does this change your view of your relationship to your own emotions?

Shared by: Laura Labate
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