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Sounds fishy… Digging in, it looks like the author, Lisa Feldman Barrett, is part of the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) cult. Hell no. Glad I checked.

• rmbyrro 5y ago
  Never heard of SEL before. A quick read on Wikipedia [1] rendered a good first impression. What do you find so wrong with it and what makes you classify it as a cult? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-emotional_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-emotional_learning
• dang 5y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• drekk 5y ago
  Lisa Feldman Barrett was, from 2018-2020, one of the 1% most-cited scientists over a ten year period. Her work in the cultural construction of emotions is taught widely to psychology and neuroscience undergrads and to dismiss it as a "cult" is doing a great disservice. If you think emotions are "elemental" or "primal" you can certainly try to make that argument with data. From what I gathered in my neuroscience undergrad emotions are not universal and the way we express them is cultural. Also has precious little to do with the topic at hand, which is the ability for language to facilitate working memory processes. Something not unique to this paper from nearly two decades ago. Check Google Scholar for the keywords working memory and psycholinguistics if you're interested in the topic. Other examples of how language alter our thinking is in gendered languages, where our descriptions of objects is impacted by our native tongue even if we're speaking in a neuter language like Hungarian.
  • donw 5y ago
    > Lisa Feldman Barrett was, from 2018-2020, one of the 1% most-cited scientists over a ten year period. Irrelevant.