Barrett Testifies at Congressional Hearing
By Craig Mariconti
Lisa Feldman Barrett (left) and
John B. Jammott III (second from left)
testify on research relating to
health policy.
Barrett, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Boston College, spoke to the Subcommittee of Research and Science Education of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology. The occasion was a hearing on the role of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences in public health, specifically aimed at improving health and well-being while reducing the cost of health care. Subcommittee Chair Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), who holds a PhD in clinical psychology, presided over the hearing.
Barrett’s research focuses on the study of emotion from psychological and neuroscience perspectives. Her past research has shown that individuals’ emotional articulations are highly varied: some experience distinct feelings of anger, sadness and fear, whereas others use these words interchangeably to indicate they are experiencing a general feeling of unpleasantness.
Further, Barrett’s research has shown that those who are better at describing their feelings function at a higher level; they are better at regulating their emotions and live more emotionally stable lives. On the other hand, those who struggle to accurately describe the subtle differences in their emotional states are more greatly affected by their emotions, often living much more tumultuous lives.
She noted that these findings are already being used to develop emotional literacy programs for children. Drawing on the work of Marc Brackett from Yale University, she described how children who can accurately label and describe their emotions are at lower risk for clinical symptoms, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. They also have better social and leadership skills and achieve higher grades in math, science, and reading.
Emotional literacy also can be taught to the nation’s aging population. For example, Barrett explains that anecdotal evidence indicates that the decision to retire is often made impulsively, perhaps after a bad day at work, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. She notes that although most people say they plan to retire at 65, the average age of retirement is actually 63. Emotional literacy training might help prevent aging adults from making that emotion-driven decision to retire early, thereby saving on social security and health care benefits.
Barrett sees her research as having enormous potential for practical application in the future. She sees emotional literacy as a means of improving interpersonal relationships including marriage and parent-child relationships. She even sees a possible application to training immigrants in the emotional vocabulary of Americans to limit the mental health problems associated with immigration.
Despite the applied value Barrett sees for her research, she stresses that applied solutions are not always immediately apparent. Her research on emotional granularity was not explicitly motivated by questions of health. Instead, her research is motivated by the desire to understand the nature of emotion. “Science is about exploration, risk, and discovery,” she pointed out. “This means that you cannot run scientific discovery like a business, where you set a tangible goal and try to meet it on a strict timeline.” She sees science like a food chain, with basic researchers at the base, feeding applied research and service providers. She stresses the importance of a healthy base of research that can be translated later into concrete solutions, even if the applied value of the basic research is not immediately apparent at the outset.