Emotions: they are constructed in real time

You feel angry. You feel joy. You feel fear.

These emotions seem to arrive fully formed, as if anger is a distinct state your brain enters. We treat emotions like they’re hardwired responses, basic instincts that evolution built into us.

But according to one theory that’s not what’s happening.

Emotions are not generated by your brain. They are constructed by it. Think of them as your brain’s best guess about what’s happening, assembled in real-time from simpler ingredients.

Here’s how it works. Your brain is constantly monitoring signals from your body. Heart rate, muscle tension, blood sugar, temperature. This creates what is known as affect. A feeling that is pleasant or unpleasant, energized or sluggish.

It’s raw sensation without meaning.

Then your brain does something remarkable. It takes this formless affect and matches it against your past experiences, your current context, and your cultural concepts.

If your heart races while someone cuts you off in traffic, your brain constructs “anger.” If it races before a presentation, it constructs the notion of anxiety. Same physical sensation, different emotion.

The crucial insight? Emotions require concepts.

A child who hasn’t learned the concept of guilt cannot feel guilt, even if they experience the same bodily sensations an adult would label as such.

The emotion emerges when the brain categorizes affect using learned concepts.

This is why emotions vary so dramatically across cultures. Some languages have words for emotions that don’t exist in others.

Not because they can’t feel those states, but because they haven’t constructed those categories.

The Ilongot people of the Philippines experience an emotion called liget. Liget is a feeling that combines energy, anger, and passion in ways English can’t capture.

It’s not a universal emotion. It’s an emergent construction.

Your brain is constantly running predictions, trying to make sense of incoming sensory data. Emotions are the narrative it creates to explain your bodily state in context.

So what does this mean for you?

This means you have more agency over your emotional life than you think. You’re not a prisoner to basic instincts.

You’re actively constructing your emotional experience, moment by moment, using the concepts and predictions your brain has learned.

Understanding this changes everything.

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