Constructed Emotion

Theory of Constructed Emotion: Barrett

‘theory of constructed emotion’ (Barrett, 2017a, 2017b) assumes that emotional episodes are constructed from more basic psychological operations – that are not specific to emotion – by means of the brain making sense of and interpreting the sensory information that comes from the environment and from internal signals (Barrett, 2014).

Barrett (2017b) takes a long view and argues that the ultimate function of the brain is to regulate the internal milieu of the body so that an organism can ‘grow, survive, and reproduce’ (p. 3). This process of ‘allostasis’ therefore dictates everything that happens in the brain. Put simply, the proposal is that the brain creates a series of concepts so that incoming sensory information can be categorized in a meaningful way and therefore guides actions in a useful way. The definition of ‘concept’ that Barrett (2017b) uses, however, is very broad and seems to refer to a whole brain representation of the external environment (based on incoming sensory information and past experience) the main function of which is to predict what is about to happen, what is the best way to deal with the predicted events, and what are the implications of the predicted events for allostasis. The brain codes what actually happens and computes if this fits well with what was predicted.