E163 | How Can We Master Our Emotions? (w/ Prof Laith Al Shawaf)

Dr. Laith Al-Shawaf is an award-winning professor, research psychologist, and writer at the University of Colorado. His research focuses on emotions, cognitive biases, and personality & individual differences. He is the primary editor and curator of the 70-chapter Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions, published in 2024.

You can find his scholarly work, popular science writing, and podcast appearances on his personal website (laithalshawaf.com) and on his X profile, @LaithAlShawaf

FB: https://www.facebook.com/laith.alshawaf/  Instagram: @laith.alshawaf.psych

______________________________________________________

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi. Dr. Alex is a consultant psychiatrist and a UKCP registered psychotherapist in-training.

Check out The Thinking Mind Blog on Substack: https://thinkingmindblog.substack.com/p/2026-is-the-year-of-the-horse-but

If you would like to invite Alex to speak at your organisation please email alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Speaking Enquiry" in the subject line.

Alex is not currently taking on new psychotherapy clients, if you are interested in working with Alex for focused behaviour change coaching , you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com with "Coaching" in the subject line.

Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

Transcript

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back. One of the things that has always fascinated me in my career, mental health, is our emotional lives. Why do we have emotions? What purpose do emotions serve? And crucially, how can we get a handle on our emotional lives? Because as we can all relate to, the quality of your life is really impacted by the quality of your emotional life.

You can have the best career, the best relationship, all the money in the world, but if your life is filled with emotional ups and downs, that's gonna have an enormous impact. And I've always felt in mental health training, we've had too little focus on our emotional systems and what they're for. Why does anxiety, for example, feel so overwhelming even when there's nothing obviously wrong?

Why does shame cut so deep? Why do we keep chasing success only to feel so strangely flat once we achieve it? Today I'm in conversation with Professor Laith Al. He's an evolutionary psychologist, and he would argue that our emotions aren't merely [00:01:00] irrational glitches as many people think they are, but they're highly sophisticated tools shaped by evolution.

Professor Al Shawa is a research psychologist and writer at the University of Colorado. His research focuses on emotions, cognitive biases, personality. He's the primary editor and curator of the Oxford Handbook of the Evolution of Emotions, which was published in 2024. Today. We discussed this idea of emotions as tools, but of course, if emotions are tools, why do they often so feel like a problem?

We explore with a fear, disgust, jealousy, guilt, even anger might be doing something far more helpful than we realize. We talk about why your anxiety may misfire for very good reasons. Misunderstanding in relationships might be the default rather than the exception. And we also dive into some uncomfortable questions.

Are we too quick to demonize emotions in the west? Can you really trust your [00:02:00] gut implicitly? Is shame always toxic? Is it sometimes protective? Are emotions these universal biological programs, or are they constructed predictions shaped by our culture? My hope is that by the end of this conversation, you may start to see your emotional life very differently.

So if you've ever felt confused by your reactions and want to get a handle on your emotional life, hopefully this episode will give you some insight. As always, you know what to do to support us. You can follow us on social media, give this episode a rating or preferably a written review. Share it with a friend, and of course you can always send us your feedback and suggestions at Thinking Mind podcast@gmail.com.

In the meantime, thank you so much for listening, and now here's today's conversation with Professor Lath Ashraf.[00:03:00] 

Professor Ashraf, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Speaker 2: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Alex. 

Speaker: Today we're gonna talk a lot about emotions and how we think about emotions in the context of human evolution. Listeners of the podcast will know, this is something I'm really interested in. Funnily enough, when I was training in psychiatry.

I remember my friend Rob, turning to me and telling me, you know, we're doing all of this in-depth psychiatry training, but we're not learning much about the emotional systems emotions themselves. Why do we have them? And I, I haven't been really been able to get that outta my mind since. So a lot of my research since finishing my training has been about like emotions, why we have them.

I mean, you've spent a lot of your work, a lot of your time looking into this in depth. What would you wish more people would understand [00:04:00] about emotions? 

Speaker 2: Well, one thing is that emotions are functional and evolved for a reason. And even if. They sometimes feel bad or aversive, they exist for a good reason.

So for example, feel fear. Fear feels aversive, but serves a function of protecting us from danger. Disgust feels aversive, but it protects us from pathogenic infection. And then even ones that people don't usually think of as having a positive side do have a positive side and have evolved for, uh, a function, which is, for example, jealousy.

Um, it can feel terrible, but it protects our valued relationships from possible interlopers or mate poachers. And then even guilt and shame these serve functions as well. The function of guilt appears to be repairing a relationship that we haven't put enough, uh, investment into, or a person that we haven't treated well enough or whose welfare we haven't [00:05:00] sufficiently valued.

And the research on shame suggests that it is a tool for. Avoiding social devaluation, avoiding falling in the eyes of our peers, avoiding falling in, reputational, uh, experiencing reputational damage or falling in status. And so I guess one of the main things is just that emotions are functional, adaptive, uh, evolved for a reason.

And even if they feel bad, they are nonetheless serving a purpose like pain, which also feels bad, but nonetheless evolved for a reason and is highly functional. 

Speaker: Do you think we've developed a bit of an unhealthy relationship with emotions in the West? Because it seems like we're at the space where we're really not appreciating that emotions have these functions, as you say, like if you tell someone, Hey, listen, you're getting really emotional, that's generally a bad thing, and it feels like we have this, we worship rationality and we want to be at all times perceived as logical thinkers and therefore [00:06:00] unemotional.

How do you view our relationship with emotions in modern, in the modern Western culture? 

Speaker 2: I do think that there is this tendency to denigrate emotions and to dichotomize them, place them in opposition to cognition. And this has a long history in psychology and philosophy. Emotions are supposed to be irrational and cognition is rational.

Emotions are hot, and cognition is cold. Emotions are dumb, and cognition is smart. Um, and I think that's an unhelpful dichotomizing because these emotions, uh, again, are, are serving a function. It's also the case that some people kind of glorify emotions and say, you should always trust your emotions. You should always trust your intuition.

I think that that's wrong as well. I think both the blanket demonization and the bank blanket glorification are not quite right. And there is a more nuanced way to think about emotions, which is that they are adaptive guides to action and they do serve a function. They can still go wrong, they [00:07:00] can still be over expressed or under expressed or triggered by the wrong stimulus.

There can still be maladaptive emotion regulation. And so, um, I think neither the always trust your emotions nor the emotions or the dumb counterpart to smart, rational cognition, neither of those is the right way to think about it. Instead, we have to ask for each emotion what is its function? And in this instance, when I'm feeling this emotion, is it, um, doing a good job or is it leading me astray or misfiring?

Speaker: Yeah, it's really interesting. I did a TEDx talk at London Business School last year and the, the title of the talk is, should we follow our gut instincts? Like, should we follow our gut? And it's a very provocative question. It's a bit like asking about your diet or your religion. People very get very provoked by it.

In the comments on the YouTube video, it's just as you're saying, some people are like, you should never follow your instincts. You know, you should [00:08:00] always double check. And other people were saying, no, I always follow my intuition and my intuition never leads me wrong. But similar to what you're saying, I was kind of in some ways tricking the people with my talk.

'cause my talk wasn't really about should you follow your instincts or not. But the real question of my talk was how do you sharpen up your emotions? How do you sharpen up your instincts? So the argument I was trying to make, and it would be good to get your thoughts on, is yes, we have all these systems, these emotional systems and instinctual systems that give us these very visceral, profound feelings.

But until we take action in the world, experiment, try different things out, it's kind of like unmolded clay. It's kind of like a radar or a map or a compass that's never been calibrated. So it's going to lead you in the wrong direction. So the real point of what I was trying to say is you have to, uh, carefully go about [00:09:00] life in a way where you try and mold your instincts so they actually become useful.

Is that something that you think is supported by the research? 

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that broadly that's true. I think even before you've refined and molded your emotions, there is still an adaptive structure to them where evolved to solve a certain problem in your life or in your environment. Uh, and so even before that process of refining, reframing, interrogating, et cetera.

Takes place. They still are adaptive, but they evolved because they were adaptive, ancestrally and on average and led to adaptive action. But that doesn't mean that they're going to be always accurate or truthful, that they're not a, a royal road to the truth. And because of the way evolution works, which is on average summed across populations and generations, that means that in any individual instance, they can still be wrong or [00:10:00] misfiring or unhelpful.

And, um, of course there's also the fact that we don't ex, we don't inhabit the exact same environment that we evolved in. So there are issues of mismatch where it may, an emotion may have been. Adaptive ancestrally, but in certain kinds of contexts in the modern world, it may be a mismatched to the kinds of things we face.

So that is to say, I do think what you said makes sense, uh, broadly speaking, and I think that emotions have adaptive utility for guiding action on average, but that doesn't mean that they're always gonna be correct, which is why the kind of thing that you talked about, which is recalibrating, reframing, revising if needed can be very helpful.

Speaker: Yeah, and I, I guess, I totally agree is that's, there'd be some like, I guess what you could call basic situations where clearly emotions have that inherent [00:11:00] adaptability. Like if you are walking down a dark alley and you're feeling fear totally makes sense, you know, that is a situation where you could potentially be in, in danger.

And there isn't a whole lot of downside to feeling fear in that situation. And but the kinds of situations I was talking about in my talk with these kind of newer abstract situations we find ourselves in like a really good one would be financial investing. Are our emotions well calibrated to something like which stocks you should pick and how you should invest your money?

Probably not because financial investing is such a new thing. It's so strange. It's so different. It's, it's long term. And I think you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you could make the argument that our emotions are probably better adapted to more concrete. Shorter term, immediate situations.

Do you think that's fair? 

Speaker 2: Yeah. Or to situations that we have ancestrally currently faced. So, you know, I think maybe you're right, the short term, uh, fear helps you get out of trouble. Disgust helps [00:12:00] you get away from pathogens, but even longer term emotions like romantic love, which helps with pair bonding, which can be a long-term endeavor or parental love, which helps with raising.

Spring, also a long-term endeavor. But those are situations that we've encountered ancestrally and that have been a part of our species for a very long time. And I think you're put putting your finger on something very important, which is that other things are novel, uh, like picking stocks or financial investment or thinking about retirement.

And it's doubtful that our emotions would be very well calibrated to those novel problems. And that's where we should worry more, interrogate them more and wonder whether they're being useful. Um, there is one other thing about emotions that. You know, you asked me what do I wish we would talk about more?

Or people would emphasize more. And that is that emotions are not just feeling states. They're not just the way it feels to be afraid or the way it feels to be dis disgusted. Emotions are, [00:13:00] they involve a cascade of changes in the body, brain, and mind. And these, these changes functionally cohere to solve the problem.

So, for example, if a mugger is coming at you in a dark alley, you don't just feel afraid. You also, um. Unimportant stuff like digestion and immune, uh, function are temporarily suppressed and downregulated energy and blood are sent to the muscles and to the periphery to help you escape or fight, fight or flight.

Uh, even perceptually and cognitively, your focus in your attention becomes narrowed on the dangerous stimulus memory. Even your memory is affected. If you know this terrain, then escape route may become more cognitively accessible to you and even the way that you categorize things in the world or the way that you conceptually carve up the world changes, you start to see everything in terms of safety versus danger when you're in the fear mode.

And so one way of viewing emotions is that they are not just [00:14:00] feeling states, but they are modes of operation. And it's a functional state in which all of those changes. I mentioned the perceptual and cognitive and physiological and behavioral. They functionally cohere in service of solving this problem, like escaping the danger.

And that's not just true for fear, it's true for other emotions as well. They are, um, a, it's a mode of operation for the whole body, brain, and mind. And it involves a lot of changes that we may not be super aware of to our physiology, memory, and perception, but that are still happening. 

Speaker: Yeah, I, I think that's a really good point.

It's something I've been thinking about quite a lot and when I'm thinking about this, the word complex comes to mind. It's like a complex of things rather than just a feeling. Take fear rather than just being a feeling. Fear is the somatic sensation. Yes. But then also the perception, the thing that you are afraid of, the behavior, the fearful action, the cognition, the fearful thoughts.

[00:15:00] So it's like this complex of things. And I guess the, the cool thing about thinking about it in these terms is. It really leads us to quickly understand what you said at the beginning, that this is a very, you know, in the best way, uh, a functional thing, a tool, something that is a vehicle for useful action.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. Um, even something like shame, which people rarely, uh, acknowledge or aware of the adaptive benefit or function of shame. Shame is there to help us. Um. Prevent status loss or social devaluation, and all of the effects that it has are in line with this. For example, it motivates us to not engage in behaviors that would cause status loss or social devaluation.

If we have engaged in those behaviors, it motivates us to conceal that information from getting out so that others don't know it and we don't fall in their eyes if they discover it. It motivates us. The studies show to try to appease others, to accept subordination, [00:16:00] to withdraw socially and not be overly assertive or demanding.

And so all of these things that are happening from how it motivates, uh, us to avoid behaviors that would damage us to conceal information that would damage us to try to apologize and repair if the damage has occurred, and to mitigate the extent of the damage if it, if it has happened. These are. Like you said, a complex of changes or a functionally coordinated set of changes that fit together with one another, and that are all geared towards solving the problem of social devaluation or falling in status, falling in the eye of our peers.

And so, yeah, complex or functionally coordinated. Set that functionally cohere 

Speaker: shame is a really interesting one in psychotherapy, uh, shame is like the boogeyman. It's like saying the word Voldemort. Everyone freaks out. And, but I would argue that in the, in the context of psychotherapy, normally what you're dealing with is shame that has been [00:17:00] unconsciously and in inappropriately attached to something which it shouldn't be.

So, for example, victims of abuse often feel shame that they were involved in that situation. I guess it would be interesting to try and understand why that shame even comes up Sometimes. Of course, it comes up because of the abuser. The abuser actually says, you know, you should be ashamed of this. Don't speak to anyone about it.

It seems to come up even if that doesn't happen. Um, but clearly that is an example of shame not being used for its like correct function if you like. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we don't want people to feel shame in cases where they've done nothing wrong. You can feel shame if your community shames you for things that actually are not morally harmful.

You're not hurting anybody, you're not doing anything that harms anybody. And yet shame is very much tied again to social devaluation. So if you happen to be in a community that looks down upon something that isn't harmful or isn't [00:18:00] bad, you will still feel shame in response to that. And one of the interesting findings about shame is that social devaluation is enough to trigger it.

You don't actually have to have done anything wrong. So there was this really cool set of studies that teased apart whether or not participants. Had done anything wrong versus whether people thought they had done something wrong. And what the study very clearly showed, or set of studies very clearly showed is that even when participants have done nothing wrong and they know they've done nothing wrong, they will still feel shame if others think they've done something wrong, which is such an interesting finding.

It shows us that it's not really about having committed an error or hurt somebody. It's about others thinking ill of you. And even if you're innocent and you know you're innocent, if others think ill of you, you experience shame, which is unfortunate because as you said, it can, um, manifest in the wrong ways and uh, in the wrong times, but it nonetheless [00:19:00] evolved for a reason and serves a function even though it can be triggered by the wrong things.

Speaker: Yeah. And, and what you just said helps us understand the difference between shame and guilt, which can be tricky as well. So this is something if you study. Dialectical behavior therapy, which is really focused on emotional regulation. You get to learn about the function of emotions, which is where I first landed there.

It describes, shame is about, shame is what happens when you divert from the values of the group or the community. Guilt is what happens when you divert from your own values. So of course you could feel ashamed and guilty at the same time if your values are the same as the groups and you've diverted from that.

But as you say, there will be situations where you do something which perhaps isn't against your uh, values, but it's against the groups. And that's still really important because we're such social creatures. That's how we evolved. And so it's definitely gonna be in the individual's best interest to do things morally, more [00:20:00] or less, which are mostly in line with the group.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And now this is a really good example because it shows us that something that is adaptive, serves a function and evolved for a reason. Can still. Hurt us or lead us, right? Or if we're in a group that triggers it when it shouldn't be triggered, we can be experiencing it at the wrong times. And that's a great example because I think that's true of all the emotions.

They're functional, adaptive, and evolve for a reason. But that doesn't mean they're always gonna be accurate or helpful. They need to be investigated or interrogated on a case by case basis. In the case of anxiety, for example, anxiety is like a century system that detects threats in the environment. And, um, there are two kinds of mistakes that the anxiety system can make.

It can have a false positive, uh, detect a threat when there's really nothing there or a false negative fail to detect a real threat. And. Obviously failing to detect a real threat is much more dangerous and [00:21:00] much more costly than quote unquote detecting a threat when there's nothing there. And so the anxiety system has evolved to be biased toward the less costly error bias toward overreacting, reacting to non-res as if they were threats.

And so, you know, anxiety is another cool example because it's protective. It serves a function. It evolved for a reason. It's going to be wrong many times because the logic of its operation or the logic of its design has embedded in it a bias to be over-responsive or overreacted. It's like a smoke detector in our kitchen.

We actually don't build them to be as accurate as possible. We build them on purpose to be biased toward false alarms because we never want them to make the opposite mistake of failing to detect a real fire. And with anxiety, it's the same thing. It's, it has evolved to be, we sometimes say adaptively biased, which means bias toward the less dangerous error because this minimizes the likelihood of the more dangerous [00:22:00] error.

And what's cool about that is it shows you both the utility and the adaptive logic of anxiety and it shows you how and why it can be wrong and can be wrong often. 

Speaker: Yeah. And that could help someone who suffers from a lot of anxiety. And I guess we do know from personality. Studies that some people are more prone to anxiety than others.

It's an individual difference, and maybe it can help them understand that, you know, at at the most fundamental level, anxiety is your mind's attempt to protect you. And so it may not feel pleasant, but it is, again, it's not a sign that something's necessarily as wrong with you as you think, but rather it's just this overcorrection that's happening 

Speaker 2: a hundred percent.

And I think that for some people, understanding their own minds actually gives comfort and reduces some of the pain or reduces some of the sting. So if you feel anxiety and you beat yourself up over it because you say, why am I like [00:23:00] this? This is so abnormal, it's so irrational. Then you're not only experiencing the anxiety, you're giving yourself grief for the anxiety.

Second order emotions where you're beating yourself up for having it. But if you start to understand the logic that we just talked about, then you say. Okay, I understand why my brain is like this. I, it's not pathological. I'm not the only one like this. This is how anxiety evolved. This is how the brain evolved for a reason.

It's not a bug, it's a feature. And so you start to see that the apparent irrationality of your anxiety is actually underlaying by a deeper adaptive logic, by a deeper adaptive rationale. Mm-hmm. For me, that does take some of the sting out of anxiety. And I think, you know, individual differences matter here too, because some people will care about this explanation more than others, but there are definitely people for whom this takes some of the pain out of anxiety.

Speaker: I think that's a huge factor. But what I would also add is that I do think anxiety [00:24:00] is much less static than we think. Um, there is actually a lot you can do psychologically for anxiety, and the key one is careful graded exposure, which is, you know, if you know about psychology, you know about this. If you don't, it's this idea that if you are anxious about something, whatever that thing is, if you can dissect it into really, really small pieces and then very slowly confront it in each stage, sticking with it until you're bored.

So this is, this would apply to someone who's agoraphobic, for example, and they're afraid of leaving the house. You would get them to go to the front door first and just hang out at the front door until they feel a bit anxious, but then hang out until they get bored, until the anxiety is gone. 'cause eventually it will peak and, and decrease.

And then just go to the next stage. And that may, that might be going outside of the door and then going down the street to the bus stop. And this might happen over days or weeks, but if you do that, this will work. And [00:25:00] what you're really doing is you're teaching your brain. There is no threat here. You know, your brain might think there's a threat because you've been in the house for six months.

But you can gradually unwire that. And that's something I really, you know, love to talk about because I think a lots of people feel like their anxiety can't be, it's this monolithic thing that can't be tackled at all. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's definitely right, that you can, uh, break it down and treat it Systematic desensitization for phobias is very successful.

Um, of course for some people the anxiety is more free floating and not attack anything in particular, which of course is harder to treat with, with graded exposure or s uh, systematic desensitization. But even then it can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy. With reframing, you can learn emotion regulation strategies.

Um, so yes, but I think it's a great example of both the utility and adaptiveness of [00:26:00] emotion and the fact that it can go wrong and can go wrong often and it going wrong often is not a sign of pathology or. Neural breakdown or anything like that. It's actually part of the operating logic of the system.

And another example might be the hedonic treadmill. You know, we accomplish something and we feel proud and happy that we accomplished it. And then very shortly thereafter, we go back to our emotional baseline. The pride dissipates, the happiness dissipates. So we start like wanting and craving the next thing again.

And this can be very frustrating for people, and they can wonder like, why am I like this? I, it feels irrational. It feels like there's something wrong with you, but in reality there's nothing wrong with you. And evolutionary logic explains it again, which is that if you imagine our ancestors and you imagine some of them accomplished something and then just rested forever, content with their accomplishment versus others accomplished something.

Were proud for a while. Then their desire to go for their next [00:27:00] goal, reasserted itself, their hankering to get the next thing done and accomplish the next thing, reasserted itself. Who would've out competed? Whom clearly the latter would've out competed the former. And so the hedonic treadmill is not a bug.

It's a feature. It's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your brain. Your brain evolved this way for a reason, and there's an underlying adaptive logic to the painful surface irrationality. For me, this kind of thing helps a lot. It takes a lot of the pain out of the hedonic treadmill, especially for those of us who are, you know, prone to beat ourselves up over the, yeah, because some people do that.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I've noticed a hit on a treadmill myself, and I wouldn't even say, you know, if I accomplish something, especially if it's something very concentrated. So some like a really successful day, like I give a talk and it goes really well. Something like that. I don't even find, I go back to baseline.

I feel like I have a calm down the next [00:28:00] day. Like I've had this day where there's almost like too much dopamine, and the next few days I'm almost have to recover. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So understanding the reasons why it could be, um, helpful for people. Have you experienced that in the clinic when you share these kinds of explanations or logic with patients?

Does it help? 

Speaker: It definitely helps and I think, um, patients are actually so unused to getting these higher level explanations for why we have our unpleasant experiences, that they're actually very grateful. It feels like you're handing them a, a blueprint, um, in a way. I, I think one, you know, we talked earlier about do we have this unhealthy relationship with emotions in the West?

And I think we do, and I think part of it is. We equate psychological health with basically feeling good all the time. I do think that's partly a result of a kind of consumerist culture where we're [00:29:00] flooded with advents, which are basically telling us here's how to feel good, here's how to 

Speaker 2: feel good.

Here's an ideal state, here's an ideal state, and I, and so I feel people are like hypnotized to believe 

Speaker: that if you're successful, that means life is really wonderful all the time, which must of course mean that you're feeling all of the positive emotions. None of the negative ones. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, which is impossible and not also, not the way evolution works.

It doesn't work to make us feel good. It works to promote survival and reproductive success. And so if you have, I mean something like fear and disgust feel bad, but they promote survival and reproductive success. Jealousy in romantic relationships feels bad, but it is something that evolved to protect the relationship from loss, abandon, infidelity, made, poaching, et cetera.

The point of emotions is not to make us feel good, it's to solve problems, survival and reproductive problems, social status problems, raising children problems, et cetera. But there is, I [00:30:00] think, a focus, like you said, in the general community and in psychology. To emphasize feeling good as if that were the end all, be all, as if that were the goal.

And it's kind of understandable. I mean, it's a very human thing. We want to feel good. We care about feeling good, but it isn't the point of emotions why they exist or what function they serve. And I think that this comes up too in, you know, earlier we were saying we shouldn't think of an emotion as just the feeling state.

We should think of it as the complex or coordinated, functionally coordinated set of changes. But one of the reasons I think that we are so likely to just identify the emotion with the feeling state is because it's the most cognitively or consciously accessible part of the emotion. You have more. By far the most obvious.

You have more access to the feeling of it than to the physiological changes or memory effects it's having on you. And not only is it the most obvious, but it's obviously what we care about. I mean, we don't [00:31:00] want to feel bad by definition. And so this one, two punch of it being the most consciously accessible and obvious and us caring about how we feel is I think part of what leads us to over identify emotion with narrow feeling state when it's really feeling state plus physiology plus perception changes, plus cognition changes, plus behavior as a set, a functionally coordinated set.

Speaker: Yeah, and I'd, I'd love people to really take in this point, especially the connection between the feeling and the perception and the behavior, because as you said, people really identify with the feeling state, but they rarely. Are aware of how that feeling state is clouding what they're seeing in front of them.

So a really good example might be if you're socially anxious and you walk into like a party and you see people laughing, that anxiety might cloud what you're seeing, such that you think those people are laughing at you or [00:32:00] humiliating you say, which it might, it's possible that that's true, but it's also very, very possible that that's not true.

And then that is gonna be linked to a behavior like withdrawing, hiding in the corner, leaving the party. People are often very aware of the feelings that they're having, but they're very rarely aware of how those feelings are clouding what they're seeing. And so people can, people so often walk away with this false notion of the reality in front of them, and then they don't even know how they're, I mean, this is the root of self-sabotage because then the behavior often works to just reinforce that original feeling.

Speaker 2: That's a great example, and I think it also highlights that, as you said, if you encounter an ambiguous stimulus, like people laughing and you're in an anxious state, you'll probably interpret it as them laughing at you. So anxiety and other emotional states affect the inferences you make about the stuff that you see.

They also affect what you pay attention to. You're more likely to notice people laughing or something bad happening if you're in an [00:33:00] anxious state. So emotions don't just change. Perception, physiology, behavior. They also change the way we interpret data and the way we make inferences about the world. And again, just because an emotion is adaptive on average and evolve for a reason, doesn't mean that all of the inferences it gives us are gonna be correct.

And so one of the things that we need to remember is that each emotion and each inference or rumination it throws at us, can be interrogated on a case by case basis. And you can ask yourself for this particular emotion in this particular episode or this particular interpretation or inference you just made.

Is that accurate or not? 

Speaker: Yeah, it's, it's so funny 'cause there's often, um, such a disconnect isn't there, between academic psychology, clinical psychology, and more like conventional self-help or self-development literature. But if you look at self-help, something really mainstream like Tony Robbins say, or [00:34:00] something like that, one of the things they'll teach is like.

Your, your attitude in large part like determines the quality of your life. And I think that might sound woo woo to a lot of people. Like, does this really make sense? Is this scientific? But thinking about this through the lens we've been discussing today, all of a sudden it starts to make sense because your attitude, in other words, your emotion is gonna determine how you see the world to some degree.

It doesn't mean you're gonna change reality or bend reality to your will. But if you're in a good, optimistic mood, and if you can reliably put yourself in that state, which I believe in most circumstances you can, then you're much more likely to, uh, see opportunities, for example. Or you're much more likely to see problems as solvable obstacles rather than these inevitable setbacks that we can't get around.

So one of the things I read I like about this lens is it really helps make. Connections between what are generally quite separate disparate disciplines. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, [00:35:00] I, I think that's right and I think that emotions, this fact that emotions affect what you see and remember and experience in the world, it's meant literally not figuratively.

It's like you will literally notice different things, remember different things, um, and interpret different things based on what emotional state you're in. I think this has the potential to help us a little bit with the kinds of conflicts that we experience with our loved ones, friends, family, romantic partners, because when.

Somebody remembers it differently than you or made a different interpretation than you, they're not lying or trying to hurt you. Their emotional state literally changed what they noticed, encoded in memory, recalled from memory and so on. And I feel like maybe understanding this, the fallibility of memory, the influence of emotion on perception, memory, cognition, et cetera, can give us a, a slightly more tolerant or gentler attitude to conflict with our loved ones.

And we can understand that they're not [00:36:00] lying because they misremembered or remembered things differently than us. Both of us are having our emotions influence what we see and remembered. And the other thing too is that understanding individual emotions I think can help. So anger for example, is the studies are, are fairly clear that anger is.

Essentially a tool for bargaining for better treatment or negotiating for better treatment when somebody has not treated you well enough or when you think that they've not placed enough value on your welfare. Um, and so if somebody, your loved one comes at you showing anger, they're not trying to hurt you or trying to victimize you or treat you unfairly, they feel like they've been treated unfairly.

They feel like they've been neglect, and so it changes the, the framing that you put on their anger. Now, you're less likely to react with your own anger. You're likely to try to say, okay, this person not trying to hurt me, and they're not, they're not. [00:37:00] Trying to, to dominate me. They're feeling hurt. They're feeling like I neglected them or didn't pay them enough attention, and they're trying to bargain or ask for, or negotiate for better treatment.

So, I mean, this doesn't like solve all problems, but going into fights with your family, friends, or loved ones or, um, tensions with this in mind, I think can help make us a little bit more tolerant of their emotions and of their perspective. 

Speaker: Absolutely. I think in, in close relationship conflict or maybe any relationship conflict, I, I think people should understand misunderstanding is the norm or the default.

It's not, it's not the exception because when emotions are running high, almost by definition, perceptions are being distorted and they're often being distorted in exactly the opposite way between the two. Um, individuals where usually both people will think the other one is being unfair to them. [00:38:00] So it takes a lot of good communication to like unravel that.

But the start of the good communication is to understand we are in all likelihood, misunderstanding each other because both of our perceptions are being distorted right now. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's, and it's not necessarily, I mean, I think distorted is a good word to use, but it also, it makes it sound as if it's necessarily inaccurate.

But I think instead what we could emphasize is that emotions are going to guide our perception and cognition in ways that help us. But what helps me might not be the same thing as what helps you because their interests are not exactly the same and therefore we may have different perceptions. 

Speaker: We could say the both perceptions are narrowed onto one thing.

So yeah, I might focus on what, you know, the small thing Sarah did wrong and Sarah might be focusing on the thing I did wrong. And both could be true. Yet neither are the whole picture by itself. 

Speaker 2: Yes, I, I think that's exactly right. 

Speaker: I, I think anger is a really interesting one because, you know, [00:39:00] if an anxiety is, um, an emotion in therapy, which you're often trying to reduce, people are often feeling way too anxious.

It's quite rare in therapy that you're trying to get someone to feel more anxious, although there are situations where you might do that. For example, if someone's trying to stop smoking, you might make, do techniques specifically to dial up their anxiety around the danger of cigarettes. Um, but anger is one where in therapy quite commonly, you're trying to get people to dial up their anger and their, what I like to call a healthy aggression.

Because the, I would say a lot of the people that come to therapy have like people pleasing tendencies, which means by definition they've kind of disavowed their aggression. Maybe they think consciously or un unconsciously, aggression makes them like a bad person. And so you have to get them to like.

Access it and not just access it to feel it, but use it as a vehicle for, for, for useful action. Like use that healthy aggression to try and [00:40:00] get a promotion or to ask someone out on a date or something like that to, to express themselves in the world in some like healthy way. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, and that aligns really nicely with the notion that it's a tool for negotiating for better treatment or asking your boss for a promotion or your friend to care more about your feelings or to treat you better, I think.

Yeah, I think that anger that aligns quite nicely with that view of anger. Um, the thing you said about people mostly needing to reduce anxiety, um, mostly presenting with more anxiety than what is optimal. Uh, not that often. Uh, presenting with less. I think it's related to the fact that I. For most of these things, there's a, for most emotions, there's a discrepancy between what is actually the optimal level and what we think is the optimal level.

So. Zero anxiety would not be helpful. Zero fear would not be helpful. It would [00:41:00] lead you into danger. And it's, you know, when you have, uh, experiments on rats, uh, brains that lesion the part of their brain that governs fear, what happens is that they engage in incredibly dangerous behavior. They go right up to the cats, they're attracted to the scent of cat urine rather than fearful of it.

And this leads them to die. And I think that the same thing is true in humans. If you lack pain or fear, you don't end up doing great. You, you end up doing poorly and dying early because these defensive protective mechanisms are not keeping you away from the dangerous tissue damage or the, uh, overly fast speed racing or falling off the cliff or whatever the case may be.

And so it is possible to have too much anxiety, and it is possible to have too little anxiety. But most of the time in, in, uh, the, the general public, we think only about having too much anxiety. And we don't really think very often about. Having too little and how that can be bad too. 

Speaker: Right? Absolutely. So those situations, I think, you know, if [00:42:00] you're, uh, very overweight or obese, you probably should have a fair amount of anxiety, uh, about that if you are not making good financial decisions.

I guess this speaks to the fact that, I mean, you could tell me if this is right. Do you think it's true that people tend to be more afraid of things that are likely to happen sooner as opposed to things that are likely to unfold slowly insidiously over decades? 

Speaker 2: I think that's true. I think that discernible triggers and being in the near future, rather than being in the far future, end up having an outsized impact on us.

We engage in this kind of, it's sometimes called temporal discounting or future discounting, not only in emotional areas, but in many different areas of cognition where we emphasize the near term more than the far turn. You know, in some cases this can be useful, especially if you, if. If you grow up in an environment where the long term isn't even guaranteed to still be there because it's an unpredictable, harsh environment and [00:43:00] you might die early, you can see how it can be adaptive to overweight the near term rather than the long term, and why such a mechanism would have evolved.

But if you live in a safe, affluent society and you're not likely to die in the near term, then it pays to invest for the future, plan for the future, and to not engage in so much future discounting. Um. So this is one of those cool examples where the tendency can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on what context you find yourself in, which I think is another important point that people don't often appreciate about emotions and about an evolutionary perspective on the mind.

They often think that if something is, they often think that an evolutionary perspective on the mind is sort of like rigid or insensitive to context. Like this is the thing, this is how it works, and it always unfolds this way. But in reality, all of our evolved mental mechanisms, emotional and other, [00:44:00] are highly sensitive to context and responsive to context.

And they wouldn't be adaptive if they were blind to context or rigid. And often you can have something like. Anxiety is a great example. Anxiety or neuroticism or vigilance toward danger is adaptive. If you live in a dangerous environment with lots of threats everywhere, and it's not so adaptive if you live in a safe environment with very few threats.

And so a lot of these things, um, emotions and, and personality traits are, uh, context dependent and helpful or unhelpful depending on what context we find ourselves in. 

Speaker: That's related to something I wanted to ask you about actually. So I've recently been reading Lisa Feldman Barrett's book, uh, how Emotions Are Made.

She's one of the pioneers for people who don't know about the so-called theory of constructed emotion, and she spends quite a lot. I haven't finished the book yet, but she finished, she spends a large part of the introduction of the book, um, going against what she would view, I think [00:45:00] as like the static idea of emotions that we have this thing called fear and anger or sadness, and it's very predictable.

Comes up in predictable context with predictable facial expressions, and she's arguing for something entirely different. How much does your view of emotions and maybe the evolutionary view contradict, um, Lisa Feldman Barrett's, do you think 

Speaker 2: there's some overlap and some differences? I think one of the issues with that constructionist view of emotion is that it doesn't quite represent an evolutionary perspective very accurately.

So, like we were saying a moment ago, an evolutionary perspective doesn't regard emotions as rigid, static always unfolding the same way, always having the same facial expression, et cetera. So there are many of us in the emotions world who work from an evolutionary perspective who are. Thinking in a very context sensitive way about the manifestation of the emotion, what behaviors it leads to, [00:46:00] whether or not it comes with the facial expression in some context, but not others.

So I and others have written about, for example, fear or disgust, the facial expression. It may be, um, hidden or absent. If you need to appear brave in front of people, it may be exaggerated or amplified if you're needing to teach your kids about what is the appropriate object of disgust or fear in this culture or this ecology.

Um, and so often I think an evolutionary perspective on emotions is much more context sensitive and less static than it is given credit for. Um, 

Speaker: yeah, I guess the key thing for me with the evolutionary view is it's saying our emotions evolve for clear adaptive functions that can be extremely varied.

According to the context. And so that's where I then appreciate the constructivist view, Lisa Feldmans Barrett's view, but fundamentally understanding [00:47:00] that just like any other sort of biological or physiological process that's evolved, um, in human beings, there is a reason for it. An evolution is part of the driving force.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I also think that another error that sometimes arises is when you notice that an emotion leads to different behaviors in different cultures, sometimes the inference that people then make is, ah, so that emotion is not evolved and universal because it leads to different behaviors in different cultures or manifests differently in different cultures.

But that is the wrong inference to make because usually the sort of. Variability between cultures or between people at the level of the output, like the behavior produced by the emotion is underlaying by cross-cultural uniformity in the neurocognitive architecture that produces the emotion or that produces the behavior.

And so you often have a situation where. You can have variability in behavior that is [00:48:00] produced by mental mechanisms, cognitive emotional mechanisms that actually are universal across species. But because they're operating in different contexts, they produce different outputs and relatively, uh, canonical example would be language.

We all have the same language learning mechanisms, but if you grow up in Tokyo versus Beirut versus Berlin, you're gonna learn Japanese versus Arabic versus German. The outcome of what language you speak is gonna differ between cultures, but the inference that, oh, therefore language is not universal, or the neurocognitive mechanisms that produce or learn language is not universal would be wrong.

And so I think that there is a little bit too often and too quickly this kind of inference where you notice cultural variability and you immediately assume that that means that the thing is not evolved. Whereas what's often the case is that the neurocognitive mechanism is universal, but it's responding to different inputs across different cultures and therefore producing different outputs across those cultures.[00:49:00] 

Speaker: That makes lots of sense. So with languages, it's not that we evolved the ability to speak French, we ability, we evolved the ability to have the capacity for language, and that language will have certain predictable patterns, which serves predictable functions. It'll have nouns, it'll have verbs, it'll have a grammar of some kind.

And similar with, similarly with emotions, you can say we evolved the capacity to have all of these different emotional experiences. Some will be positive and pleasant, some will be negative. Some will promote evasive action, some will promote, uh, aggressive action. And all likelihood these things are pretty universal, but then there'll be so many variations and shades and flavors depending on all of this contextual stuff.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we can get even more specific and we can say, let's say we look at disgust, for example. We can say we've evolved, disgusted, and the capacity for disgust. Everybody in in our species has that. Barring neural pathology. 'cause [00:50:00] there are some cases like that, but pretty much everybody in our species has that.

Now, what is disgusting in your local culture? Whether you view insects, uh, eating insects as disgusting, or whether you view eating, um, pork as disgusting or whatever, that is going to be responsive to local cultural norms and local ecology. Now, some disgusting things will still be universal. I mean, humans find sources of pathogenic infection, like open wounds and rotting food and stuff like that.

Some things are still gonna be universally disgusting and other things are going to depend on what is, um, what you learn in your local culture or ecology. So the emotion itself, universal, some of the trigger is universal. Other of the triggers, context sensitive or variable across cultures. Uh, 

Speaker: speaking of discuss, so think as like Jonathan Hyt.

Have made the argument that disgusted is an [00:51:00] emotion that obviously classically, as you say, it's about pathogen of avoidance. And in more modern context, he see, he sees disgusted as being applied to, uh, political disagreement, ingroup, outgroup at the level of ideas in your view. Is that right? Is that the same emotion, is that the same process that's happening at all those different levels?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is the idea that disgust has different domains. There's the pathogen domain, there's the sexual domain, sexual disgust keeps you away from, um, unsuitable mating partners or injudicious uh, mating partners. And then moral disgust is about yes, like taking offense at these wrong things and coordinating action against offenses and so on.

Um, it's kind of an open debate because some people think that rather than being moral discussed, it's more like moral outrage or righteous indignation. So is it anger or is it discussed or is it a mix of the two? I, I [00:52:00] consider it sort of an open question, but there is evidence suggesting that even if it's not quite the same emotion.

Even if it's not exactly the same emotion, it shares certain features with the classical disgust. 

Speaker: I guess it's that, uh, the intensity and the severity and the Republican, I guess is what I, why it makes sense to me that sense of Republican and aversion. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean we use similar language to describe it and some studies suggest that there's a semi shared neural underlying basis and so there's definitely overlap.

The question of whether we should consider it exactly the same emotion is probably, I would say to some extent jury still out. But also this is a question of like, how crisply do you delineate the boundaries between one mental mechanism and another, which is a difficult thing when you're dealing with intangible, invisible stuff like the mind or mental mechanisms.

Speaker: Thinking about emotions, I'm more imagining, you know, the way when you open like paint app, you have all of the [00:53:00] different colors that kind of slowly bleed into each other, and that's kind of how I think about. Emotions where there's, it's more of a continuum, a less definable continuum versus categorical.

I don't know if there's any scientific evidence that that's the case, but 

Speaker 2: that's a big debate too in the field. Um, I think it's possible to think about it as, I mean, anger I think, is categorically different from guilt, which is categorically different from disgusted. So I do think that each of these emotions serves a very different function, evolve for a very different reason.

Guilt repair, a valued relationship with somebody that you haven't sufficiently attended to or cared for. Disgust, avoid pathogens, anger, negotiate for better treatment, categorically different functions, but then each emotion may have. Maybe an emotion family or an emotion cluster family, kind of in the Wittgenstein sense where, um, anger, indignation, outrage, [00:54:00] frustration, these things may be part of a family and they may exist on a continuum, which is the anger continuum.

I would, however, regard the anger continuum as being categorically separate from the guilt continuum or categorically separate from the discuss continuum, such that we can distinguish relatively cleanly between emotions, but then many emotions will be a family nonetheless. 

Speaker: Uh, we're almost outta time, but before we go, I was wondering, you know, for, for individuals who are feeling a bit lost emotionally speaking, for whom this is all a bit new, what do you think are some good practices that someone can do to get, develop a bit of a healthier relationship with their emotions?

Speaker 2: I think one thing is neither blanket trusting all of your emotions nor, um, blanket vilifying them as irrational and as opposed to cognition or opposed to rationality. Instead, I think understanding that they evolve for a function and are useful on average, but [00:55:00] can still misfire or lead you astray is the, is the right way to think about it.

And if you are thinking about it this way, then each emotion needs to be investigated on a case by case basis and each emotion episode needs to be investigated on a case by case basis. Now this is like, it's not as easy. It takes more work. It's not as satisfying as saying that they're either good or bad, but I think it's the right approach.

So for example, you know, if you experience sadness or depression. You can ask yourself, don't just trust it and don't just vilify it. Begin by asking yourself, is this trying to tell me that I'm stuck in a dead end job or relationship, or there's something about my life that needs to change? And then try to answer that question?

The answer might be yes, and then this is adaptive and functional, and the ruminations and analysis that it show that is throwing at you are helping you solve a problem, or it might not be. It might be like a case of anxiety. We [00:56:00] said earlier some anxiety is overreactions or reacting to non-res as if they were threats, and so it could be either.

Useful in this instance or not useful in this instance, telling you something valuable to pay attention to or, um, not. And so I think that, uh, in each case we need to start by asking, is this emotion useful and telling me something important? But don't just accept that in a facile blanket way. Um, look into it yourself, and then you can decide that actually if it's painful and not helpful, you can learn emotion regulation strategies to regulate it.

There are many that are cognitive and physiological that I'm sure you work with in the clinic. Um, and so I think that this notion that emotions are helpful and functional, but nonetheless can be wrong and lead us astray. So you ask first, and then if you, if you need to [00:57:00] reframe, regulate, or reappraise, you do, uh, that's something useful to keep in mind.

Speaker: So I guess the twin dangers are like, the one danger would be to be cold and logical and kind of Dr. Spock type. And then the other danger would be to be totally consumed by your passions in any, any moment. But I guess what you're arguing for is a kind of, rather than our cognitions and our emotions, I guess by cognition, I mean thoughts, beliefs, ideas, rather than our cognition and emotions playing a tug of war.

I guess you're arguing for a kind of reconciliation, so they're kind of rowing in the same direction. Do you think that's right? 

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that, you know, you mentioned twin dangers. I think that's, that's also right that there are two dangers. One is. This, always trust your gut, always trust your emotions idea, which I think that is too, um, blanket a statement.

And then the other one is, never trust your emotions. They're the rational, dumb, irrational, dumb [00:58:00] counterpart to your thoughts or to your cognition. I think neither of those is right. So yes, you, you try to, you want to try to understand your emotions and see if they're showing you something useful or not.

If they are great, and if they aren't, then you can engage in reappraisal or regulation or reframing or whatever you need to do in order to, um, to solve that, that issue. And so that's kind of a case by case basis. A bit of a boring answer, but probably a more useful one than either of what you call the twin dangers.

Speaker: I guess the step I normally advocate before that is becoming more emotionally literate, coming to practice, introspection a lot, feeling or feelings, and try to figure out, okay, what feeling am I feeling right now? And can I apply a useful word for this? Is there research to suggest that this is kind of a, 'cause, this is something I talk about a lot in therapy, but is there research to back this up that this is like a learnable skill that you might not be so practicing, uh, introspection, but as you do [00:59:00] it, you can come, become better and have a more, have more awareness of your emotions moment to moment?

Speaker 2: Yeah. There is research also suggesting that, uh, labeling or naming the emotion, as you suggested, can help take some of the sting out of it. And, um, you know, one of the basic ideas of mindfulness and mindfulness based stress reduction and things like that is noticing the emotion is a first step and it tends to take some of its sting or some of its power away.

I also think that what you're talking about, the introspection and the labeling is it's definitely a first step because you can't even really ask yourself, what, what am I feeling and what is it trying to tell me? Or what is it showing me? Unless you introspect enough to know what you're feeling. And so you need to be able to notice what you're feeling and ideally to name it.

And then you can ask, is this useful sadness [01:00:00] or useless sadness? Is this helpful anxiety or unhelpful anxiety? But you have to first notice what it is and try to name it. I think that's right. 

Speaker: That's super helpful. We're out of time, but I've barely covered half of what I wanted to speak to you about, so unfortunately I'm gonna have to have you back at some point in the future.

But until then, thank you so much for joining me. I really enjoyed hearing your insights. 

Speaker 2: I enjoyed it too, and I would love to come back again sometime in the future. 

Speaker: Great. Thank you so.