Doug NollI'm called in when human dynamics are getting in the way of strategic leadership execution.

The Surprising Truth About Emotions and Culture #emotions #culture

26 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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1:17

In this talk, the speaker argues that humans are not born with discrete emotions but with a basic affective system—simple sensations of pleasure and pain. Around 18 months, as toddlers begin to speak, the emotional centers of the brain, particularly the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, mature and enable the brain to transform raw affect into abstract emotional concepts. These emotions are then shaped by culture; each culture defines and is defined by its unique set of emotions, leading to cross‑cultural variation despite a shared set of basic affective experiences. The speaker emphasizes that recognizing emotions as learned, culturally constructed entities represents a major paradigm shift, carrying both benefits and challenges.

Chapters

Here's the thing that's so interesting. We are not born with emotions. We're born with something else that I call affect. Emotions, however, begin to be created as the emotional centers of our brain start to mature and come online, which is right around 18 months of age, about the time that toddlers start to verbalize. That's about the time when the emotional centers come on, and the toddler's job is to take affective experience, basically feelings of pleasure and pain, and start creating abstract cognitive concepts known as emotions in their brain. And that's done in the part of the brain called the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. We say that emotions are culturally created because every culture is defined by the emotions that are in that culture. And so, for example, in thousands of Asian cultures, each one of those cultures has emotions that are different from other cultures because the emotions are so important to that particular culture based on all different outside influences. And although all humans share some basic emotions, the basically our 9 affect. Once we start categorizing emotions, we've, we learned that emotions are what define culture and culture defines emotions and that we're not born with them. So that's a big, big shift because we all think we're born with these things called emotions. And in fact, we're not. And that, that is both a blessing and a curse.