User:Idontlikewriting/sandbox

Barrett proposed the theory to resolve what she calls the "emotion paradox," which she claims has perplexed emotion researchers for decades, and describes as follows: People have vivid and intense experiences of emotion in day-to-day life: they report seeing emotions like "anger", "sadness", and "happiness" in others, and they report experiencing "anger", "sadness" and so on themselves. Nevertheless, psychophysiological and neuroscientific evidence has failed to yield consistent support for the existence of such discrete categories of experience. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that what exists in the brain and body is affect, and emotions are constructed by multiple brain networks working in tandem.

Most other theories of emotion assume that emotions are genetically endowed, not learned. Some others scientist believe there is circuits in the brain: an anger circuit, a fear circuit, and so on. Charles Darwin, in his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals", used examples to support the idea that emotions and their expressions are a universal part of human nature, and that people can recognize and express emotions without any training.

The theory of constructed emotion calls this assumption into question. It suggests that these emotions (often called "basic emotions" ) are not biologically hardwired, but instead are phenomena that emerge in consciousness "in the moment" from more fundamental ingredients.