A neuroscientist explains why we need better ways to talk about emotions

Pixar’s Inside Out is a charming, creative film — that “provides a good example of many common but incorrect assumptions about emotion.” That’s according to Ralph Adolphs and David Anderson, both professors of neuroscience at Caltech and the authors of The Neuroscience of Emotion (Princeton University Press).

Watching the film you’d think, for example, that there are just a few primary emotions, that emotions have mostly external causes, that they’re like reflexes, and that specific emotions cause specific behavior. In short, you’d think that we know a lot more about emotions than we actually do. “We think that because we feel emotions — we feel happy or sad or angry — that we’re an expert on them, but that’s not the...

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