Neuroscience Nuggets #5: Emotional Guessing Game

Novak Djokovic, the world’s #1 men’s tennis player and potentially G.O.A.T, rarely shows emotion unless he’s smashing rackets, violently screaming, or accidentally hitting balls at line judges. (Honestly, I’m not a fan though I totally respect what an outstanding athlete he is.)

Yet on Sunday night, as he teetered on the imminent edge of unexpected defeat, the crowd at the US Open Final match rose to its feet to encourage him on, shouting his nickname "Nole, Nole, Nole" in unison. 


Novak smiled, waved to the crowd and then did something completely out of character: he showed he was a real human being. 

Peaking out from beneath his towel as he wiped the sweat from his face, viewers caught sight of a twisted, anguished mouth that looked like it walked off a Francis Bacon painting. 

It became suddenly clear that the typically stoic, unflappable super athlete was having a big, ugly, uncontrollable cry. 

And it was shockingly beautiful.
 

But what was it? What exact human emotion was Novak expressing?
 

• Was it joy from feeling the love and support of a hard-knocks crowd that usually jeers at him?

• Was it the dread of letting everyone down?

• Was it a release of the weight of expectation?

• Was it frustration and fear?

• Was it physical pain?

• Exhaustion?

The truth is that no one besides Novak could really know what the tears were about because, and here comes today’s neuroscience nugget: emotions aren’t uniform, universal reactions to life that have ready-made ways of showing up on our faces and in our bodies.


You can’t know what someone is feeling just by looking at them.

You may think that when you look at someone's face you can understand exactly how they feel. But in fact your brain is guessing, and it's using your own past experiences to make those guesses. 


We construct our own emotional experience, and our perception of others’s emotions, on the spot.

“Emotions are your brains’ best guess of how you should feel in the moment,” explains neuroscientist and author of How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barret. 

They're your brain’s “creations” of what your bodily sensations mean in relation to what is going on around you in the world, and those “creations” are the sum of three distinctly subjective ingredients:

1. Your internal bodily cues (heart rate, muscle contraction, temperature, etc)

2. Your external surroundings (what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch)

3. Your past experiences (and how those past experiences compare to the present)

“Our emotion concepts vary widely from culture to culture. They come with a rich set of rules, all in the service of regulating your body budget or influencing someone else’s," says the founder of The Neuroscience School, Dr. Irena O’Brien. "That’s why we shouldn’t assume that we know how someone else is feeling from their facial expression or body language."

So what do Novak's mysterious tears have to do with you?

1. It’s easy to assume you know someone’s emotional state through observation, but you’re really just guessing through your own experiential lens. If you want to know what someone is truly feeling, you need to ask them.

2. Be it your boss, your spouse, your kids, your friends, you shouldn't assume that any one can correctly read the emotions you’re feeling either. Best way for them to know what you’re feeling is to go out on a limb and tell them. 

So, what emotion was Novak truly expressing on the courts? Click here to hear all about it from the "Joker" himself. 

Next steps forward

I usually use this blog to share the learnings and discoveries that my clients make along their self-realization journeys. 

But the last month I’ve been quiet. 

The outrage and pain of the Black Lives Matter protests in response to the unjust, gruesome murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, as well as countless Black lives before and after them, has been an awakening for me. 

Over the last several weeks I’ve been reading, listening and learning a lot about what I didn’t know, I didn’t know. 

I’ve always seen myself as a well-informed progressive who does the right thing. But the Black Lives Matter movement has been heart-wrenching and eye-opening to me. There is so much more I can do to educate myself and show up as an ally against racism and discrimination both personally and professionally. 

I don’t have any or all of the answers, but all I know is that centuries of racist policies and practices will not reverse themselves without everyone doing some heavy lifting, especially white privileged women like me.

So that’s why I’m sharing this special newsletter with you today. I want you to know where my heart is right now. And why I plan to continue to learn, support and fight for the BIPOC community. 

The process is going to be uncomfortable, messy and multifold, but I’m committed to doing the work. 

These are some of the steps I’m taking now:

• Absorbing the sickening stories of systemic racism that I’ve shied away from because I just didn’t think I could handle it. I’m watching and listening now with all of my senses on high to series like 13th, When They See Us, and I Am Not Your Negro. 

• Reading Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s books (in the middle of How To Be An Antiracist and it’s mind blowing. He also has a board book called Antiracist Baby and a book adapted for teens called Stamped, so everyone in the family’s covered!). 

• Responding to the global awareness initiatives of Black Lives Matter.

• Following a wide range of Black women activists, artists, writers and educators, such as Tarana J Burke, Austin Channing Brown, Rachel Cargle, Mikki Kendall, and my new favorite essayist, Loré Yessuff. 

• Donating to the following organizations: Color of Change, an amazing collective that creates awareness campaigns to end injustice; Loveland Therapy Fund a non-profit that provides financial assistance to Black women and girls seeking therapy and The Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research.

• And of course voting in the next US election to get our fascist-in-chief out of office!

Thanks so much for being here.. 

Much love to you,

Zeva