Lisa Feldman Barrett
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Lisa Feldman Barrett is a distinguished professor of
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
at
Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...
, where she focuses on
affective science Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others. Of particular relevance are the nature of feeling, mood, emotionally ...
. She is a director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory. Along with James Russell, she is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal ''
Emotion Review ''Emotion Review'' is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Sage Publications in association with the International Society for Research on Emotions (ISRE). It is indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index, ''Journal Citation Reports' ...
''. Along with
James Gross James J. Gross is a psychologist best known for his research in emotion and emotion regulation. He is a professor at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. Education Gross received his B.A. in phil ...
, she founded the
Society for Affective Science The Society for Affective Science is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering basic and applied research on affect. It was founded in 2013 by Lisa Feldman Barrett and James Gross James J. Gross is a psychologist best known for his re ...
.


Biography

Barrett was born in 1963 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to a
working poor The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...
family and was the first member of her extended family to attend university. After graduating from the University of Toronto with honors, she pursued a Ph.D. in
clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...
at the University of Waterloo with the goal of becoming a therapist, until a frustrating puzzle sidetracked her from a clinical career. As a graduate student, she failed eight times to replicate a simple experiment, finally realizing that her seeming failed attempts were, in fact, successfully replicating a previously undiscovered phenomenon. The resulting research direction became her life's work: understanding the nature of emotion in the brain. Following a clinical internship at the
University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
, psychophysiology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Barrett is most inspired by
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
,
Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
, and
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
. In 2019–2020, she served as president of the
Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...
. From 2018–2021, she was ranked in the top one percent of the most-cited scientists in the world over a ten-year period. In addition to academic work, Barrett has written two science books for the public, ''How Emotions are Made'' (2017) and ''Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain'' (2020), and her
TED TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depa ...
talk was among the 25 most popular worldwide in 2018.


Professional history


Study of human emotions

At the beginning of her career, Barrett's research focused on the structure of affect, having developed experience-sampling methods and open-source software to study emotional experience. Barrett and members at the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory study the nature of emotion broadly from social-psychological,
psychophysiological Psychophysiology (from Greek , ''psȳkhē'', "breath, life, soul"; , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , '' -logia'') is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. While psychophysiology w ...
, cognitive science, and neuroscience perspectives, and take inspiration from anthropology, philosophy, and linguistics. They also explore the role of emotion in vision and other psychological phenomena. In 1996, she joined the Psychology Faculty at Boston College. Before that she was an
assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and general ...
of clinical psychology at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research has focused on the main issues in the science of emotions such as: * *What are the basic building blocks of emotional life? *Building blocks of emotional life *Why is it that people quickly and effortlessly perceive anger, sadness, fear in themselves and others, yet scientists have been unable to specify a set of clear criteria for empirically identifying these emotional events? *What roles do language and conceptual knowledge play in emotion perception *Are there really differences between the emotional lives of men and women (see )


Theory of constructed emotion

Barrett developed her current theory of constructed emotion originally during her graduate training. According to Barrett, emotions are "not universal, but vary from culture to culture" (see
Emotions and culture According to some theories, emotions are universal phenomena, albeit affected by culture. Emotions are "internal phenomena that can, but do not always, make themselves observable through expression and behavior". While some emotions are universal ...
). She says that emotions "are not triggered; you create them. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a flexible brain that wires itself to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing, which provide that environment."


Honors and awards

* Independent Scientist Research (K02) Award,
National Institute of Mental Health The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the prima ...
, 2002–2007. * Fellow, Association for Psychological Science, 2003. * Fellow,
Society for Personality and Social Psychology The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) is an academic society for personality and social psychologists focused on promoting scientific research that explores how people think, behave and interact. It is the largest organization o ...
, 2005. * Fellow,
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
, 2005. * Career Trajectory Award,
Society of Experimental Social Psychology The Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) is a scientific organization of social scientists founded in 1965 with the goal of advancing and communicating theories in social psychology. Its first chairperson was Edwin P. Hollander.Hollande ...
, 2006. *Cattell Fund Fellowship, 2007–2008. * NIH Director's Pioneer Award, 2007–2012, to study how the brain creates emotion. * Kavli Fellow,
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
, 2008. * Elected Fellow,
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
, 2008. * Arts in Academics award,
University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...
, 2010. * Excellence in Research and Creative Activity Award,
Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...
, 2012. * Elected Fellow,
Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...
, 2012. * Award for Distinguished Service in Psychological Science,
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
, 2013. * Elected Fellow,
Society of Experimental Psychologists The Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP), originally called the Society of Experimentalists, is an academic society for experimental psychologists An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determin ...
, 2013. * Diener Award in Social Psychology,
Society for Personality and Social Psychology The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) is an academic society for personality and social psychologists focused on promoting scientific research that explores how people think, behave and interact. It is the largest organization o ...
, 2014. * Heritage Wall of Fame,
Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology The Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology (abbreviated FPSP) is a New York-based non-profit charitable organization that funds research grants and awards to researchers in the fields of personality and social psychology Social psych ...
, 2016. * Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement, Association for Psychological Science, 2018. * Elected Fellow,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
, 2018. * President,
Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...
, 2019–2020. *
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in neuroscience, 2019. * John P. McGovern Award in the Behavioral Sciences,
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
, 2020. *APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions,
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
, 2021. *Mentorship Award in Affective Science, Society for Affective Science, 2022.


Books

* ''Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain''. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. . * ''How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain''. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. .


See also

*
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people' ...
*
List of University of Waterloo people The University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is a comprehensive public university that was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles. It has grown into an institution of more than 42,000 students, faculty, and ...


References


External links


Publications
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feldman Barrett, Lisa A American women psychologists Canadian women psychologists Emotion psychologists American women neuroscientists American cognitive neuroscientists Northeastern University faculty Harvard Medical School people 1963 births Living people Scientists from Toronto University of Toronto alumni University of Waterloo alumni American women academics 21st-century American women scientists