Leading in a Non-Linear World

CHAPTER 4RETHINKING EMOTIONS

In the past 30 years, a quiet revolution has been taking place in our understanding of the nature of human emotions. The prevailing classical view is that they are ‘hardwired’ responses, located in specific regions of the brain, and are triggered by external stimuli. This gives rise to the appraisal of emotions as irrational and being associated with a loss of control, particularly in the workplace. Of course, fear, anger, or defensiveness can trip us into self-sabotaging responses, and feelings of optimism can blind us to uncomfortable truths. But a new understanding of emotions will help us to see them as an invaluable source of precious information, often more rational than what we believe our ‘logical’ arguments to be. One of the most significant pioneers in this revolution is the psychologist and neuroscientist, Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose work has confronted longstanding scientific beliefs and conventional wisdom about the nature of our emotions.

When Barrett and her colleagues built their laboratory over 30 years ago, now one of the largest affective neuroscience laboratories in the world, they assumed their work would focus on helping people to get better at understanding what they were feeling through identifying objective markers of emotion. What they soon discovered was that there were no objective markers – there were no regions of the brain dedicated to anger, happiness, or shame. Instead, they developed a new theory in which emotions ...