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My research lab sits about a mile from where several bombs exploded
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during the Boston Marathon in 2013.
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The surviving bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Chechnya,
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was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.
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Now, when a jury has to make the decision
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between life in prison and the death penalty,
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they base their decision largely on whether or not the defendant
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feels remorseful for his actions.
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Tsarnaev spoke words of apology,
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but when jurors looked at his face,
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all they saw was a stone-faced stare.
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Now, Tsarnaev is guilty, there's no doubt about that.
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He murdered and maimed innocent people,
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and I'm not here to debate that.
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My heart goes out to all the people who suffered.
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But as a scientist, I have to tell you
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that jurors do not and cannot detect remorse
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or any other emotion in anybody ever.
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Neither can I, and neither can you,
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and that's because emotions are not what we think they are.
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They are not universally expressed and recognized.
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They are not hardwired brain reactions
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that are uncontrollable.
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We have misunderstood the nature of emotion
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for a very long time,
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and understanding what emotions really are has important consequences for all of us.
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I have studied emotions as a scientist for the past 25 years,
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and in my lab, we have probed human faces by measuring electrical signals
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that cause your facial muscles to contract to make facial expressions.
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We have scrutinized the human body in emotion.
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We have analyzed hundreds of physiology studies
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involving thousands of test subjects.
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We've scanned hundreds of brains,
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and examined every brain imaging study on emotion
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that has been published in the past 20 years.
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And the results of all of this research are overwhelmingly consistent.
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It may feel to you like your emotions are hardwired
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and they just trigger and happen to you,
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but they don't.
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You might believe that your brain is prewired with emotion circuits,
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that you're born with emotion circuits, but you're not.
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In fact, none of us in this room have emotion circuits in our brain.
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In fact, no brain on this planet contains emotion circuits.
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So what are emotions, really?
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Well, strap on your seat belt, because ...
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emotions are guesses.
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They are guesses that your brain constructs in the moment
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where billions of brain cells are working together,
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and you have more control over those guesses
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than you might imagine that you do.
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Now, if that sounds preposterous to you, or, you know, kind of crazy,
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I'm right there with you, because frankly, if I hadn't seen the evidence for myself,
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decades of evidence for myself,
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I am fairly sure that I wouldn't believe it either.
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But the bottom line is that emotions are not built into your brain at birth.
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They are just built.
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To see what I mean, have a look at this.
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Right now, your brain is working like crazy.
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Your neurons are firing like mad trying to make meaning out of this
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so that you see something other than black and white blobs.
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Your brain is sifting through a lifetime of experience,
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making thousands of guesses at the same time,
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weighing the probabilities,
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trying to answer the question,
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"What is this most like?"
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not "What is it?"
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but "What is this most like in my past experience?"
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And this is all happening in the blink of an eye.
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Now if your brain is still struggling to find a good match
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and you still see black and white blobs,
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then you are in a state called "experiential blindness,"
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and I am going to cure you of your blindness.
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This is my favorite part. Are you ready to be cured?
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(Cheers)
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All right. Here we go.
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(Gasps)
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All right.
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So now many of you see a snake,
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and why is that?
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Because as your brain is sifting through your past experience,
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there's new knowledge there,
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the knowledge that came from the photograph.
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And what's really cool is that
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that knowledge which you just acquired moments ago
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is changing how you experience these blobs right now.
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So your brain is constructing the image of a snake
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where there is no snake,
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and this kind of a hallucination
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is what neuroscientists like me call "predictions."
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Predictions are basically the way your brain works.
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It's business as usual for your brain.
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Predictions are the basis of every experience that you have.
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They are the basis of every action that you take.
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In fact, predictions are what allow you to understand the words that I'm speaking
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as they come out of my --
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Audience: Mouth. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Mouth. Exactly.
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Predictions are primal.
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They help us to make sense of the world in a quick and efficient way.
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So your brain does not react to the world.
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Using past experience,
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your brain predicts and constructs
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your experience of the world.
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The way that we see emotions in others are deeply rooted in predictions.
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So to us, it feels like we just look at someone's face,
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and we just read the emotion that's there in their facial expressions
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the way that we would read words on a page.
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But actually, under the hood, your brain is predicting.
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It's using past experience based on similar situations
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to try to make meaning.
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This time, you're not making meaning of blobs,
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you're making meaning of facial movements
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like the curl of a lip or the raise of an eyebrow.
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And that stone-faced stare?
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That might be someone who is a remorseless killer,
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but a stone-faced stare might also mean
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that someone is stoically accepting defeat,
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which is in fact what Chechen culture prescribes for someone
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in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's situation.
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So the lesson here
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is that emotions that you seem to detect in other people
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actually come in part from what's inside your own head.
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And this is true in the courtroom,
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but it's also true in the classroom,
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in the bedroom,
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and in the boardroom.
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And so here's my concern:
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tech companies which shall remain nameless ...
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well, maybe not.
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You know, Google, Facebook --
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(Laughter)
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are spending millions of research dollars to build emotion-detection systems,
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and they are fundamentally asking the wrong question,
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because they're trying to detect emotions in the face and the body,
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but emotions aren't in your face and body.
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Physical movements have no intrinsic emotional meaning.
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We have to make them meaningful.
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A human or something else has to connect them to the context,
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and that makes them meaningful.
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That's how we know that a smile might mean sadness
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and a cry might mean happiness,
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and a stoic, still face might mean
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that you are angrily plotting the demise of your enemy.
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Now, if I haven't already gone out on a limb,
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I'll just edge out on that limb a little further and tell you
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that the way that you experience your own emotion
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is exactly the same process.
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Your brain is basically making predictions, guesses,
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that it's constructing in the moment
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with billions of neurons working together.
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Now your brain does come prewired to make some feelings,
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simple feelings that come from the physiology of your body.
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So when you're born,
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you can make feelings like calmness and agitation,
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excitement, comfort, discomfort.
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But these simple feelings are not emotions.
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They're actually with you every waking moment of your life.
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They are simple summaries of what's going on inside your body,
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kind of like a barometer.
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But they have very little detail,
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and you need that detail to know what to do next.
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What do you about these feelings?
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And so how does your brain give you that detail?
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Well, that's what predictions are.
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Predictions link the sensations in your body
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that give you these simple feelings
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with what's going on around you in the world
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so that you know what to do.
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And sometimes,
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those constructions are emotions.
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So for example, if you were to walk into a bakery,
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your brain might predict that you will encounter
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the delicious aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
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I know my brain would predict
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the delicious aroma of freshly baked chocolate cookies.
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And our brains might cause our stomachs to churn a little bit,
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to prepare for eating those cookies.
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And if we are correct,
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if in fact some cookies have just come out of the oven,
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then our brains will have constructed hunger,
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and we are prepared to munch down those cookies
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and digest them in a very efficient way,
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meaning that we can eat a lot of them,
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which would be a really good thing.
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You guys are not laughing enough. I'm totally serious.
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(Laughter)
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But here's the thing.
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That churning stomach,
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if it occurs in a different situation,
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it can have a completely different meaning.
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So if your brain were to predict a churning stomach
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in, say, a hospital room while you're waiting for test results,
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then your brain will be constructing dread
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or worry or anxiety,
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and it might cause you to, maybe,
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wring your hands
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or take a deep breath or even cry.
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Right? Same physical sensation, same churning stomach,
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different experience.
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And so the lesson here
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is that emotions which seem to happen to you
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are actually made by you.
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You are not at the mercy of mythical emotion circuits
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which are buried deep inside some ancient part of your brain.
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You have more control over your emotions
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than you think you do.
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I don't mean that you can just snap your fingers
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and change how you feel the way that you would change your clothes,
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but your brain is wired
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so that if you change the ingredients that your brain uses to make emotion,
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then you can transform your emotional life.
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So if you change those ingredients today,
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you're basically teaching your brain how to predict differently tomorrow,
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and this is what I call being the architect of your experience.
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So here's an example.
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All of us have had a nervous feeling before a test, right?
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But some people experience crippling anxiety before a test.
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They have test anxiety.
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Based on past experiences of taking tests,
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their brains predict a hammering heartbeat,
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sweaty hands,
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so much so that they are unable to actually take the test.
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They don't perform well,
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and sometimes they not only fail courses but they actually might fail college.
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But here's the thing:
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a hammering heartbeat is not necessarily anxiety.
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It could be that your body is preparing to do battle
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and ace that test ...
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or, you know, give a talk
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in front of hundreds of people on a stage where you're being filmed.
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(Laughter)
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I'm serious.
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(Laughter)
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And research shows that when students learn
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to make this kind of energized determination
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instead of anxiety,
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they perform better on tests.
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And that determination seeds their brain to predict differently in the future
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so that they can get their butterflies flying in formation.
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And if they do that often enough,
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they not only can pass a test
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but it will be easier for them to pass their courses,
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and they might even finish college,
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which has a huge impact on their future earning potential.
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So I call this emotional intelligence in action.
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Now you can cultivate this emotional intelligence yourself
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and use it in your everyday life.
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So just, you know,
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imagine waking up in the morning.
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I'm sure you've had this experience. I know I have.
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You wake up and as you're emerging into consciousness,
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you feel this horrible dread,
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you know, this real wretchedness,
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and immediately, your mind starts to race.
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You start to think about all the crap that you have to do at work
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and