Lisa Feldman Barrett

Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett featured in the BBC

Recently, Prof. Lisa Feldman Barrett was featured in the News@Northeastern about her work in a recently published BBC article entitled, “The ‘untranslatable’ emotions you never knew you had”. The article discusses the work of Dr. Tim Lomas of the University of East London whose Positive Lexicography Project aims to capture the many variations and nuances of feelings found across the world, in the hopes that we may incorporate them into our daily lives. In his research, he finds words from other cultures that are “untranslatable” in the English language and represent very precise emotional experiences.

Prof. Barrett’s work is referenced by Dr. Lomas as evidence that our ability to label and identify our emotions can have far-reaching effects. This is called, “emotional granularity”, and can help determine how well we cope with life. Prof. Barrett agrees that Loma’s “positive lexicography” could be a good prompt to start identifying the subtler contours of our emotional landscape.

To learn more about Prof. Barrett’s work and Dr. Loma’s “positive lexicography project”, check out the article here.

Psychology