Meaning is how we experience the brain’s hierarchical classification system. It allows us to make comparisons, rankings, and judgments about value: what is desirable, helpful, beautiful, and moral.

The existence of an abstract coding of emotions in the brain signifies that even though we are tempted to believe that our emotions directly depend on what happens in the surrounding world, it is our ...

A paper by a psychologist at the University of Kansas examines how language shapes our emotional experience of the world. Katie Hoemann, assistant professor of psychology at KU, has published her ...

For decades, happiness has been treated as the ultimate life goal, promoted through self-help culture, productivity advice, and social comparison. Yet psychologists increasingly argue that the direct ...

Historically, emotions have been viewed as irrational, unstable or primitive—hardly the stuff of sound decision-making. Enlightenment thinkers like Descartes and Kant privileged reason as the highest ...