Latest Issue of the MindBrainEd Think Tank + (ISSN 2434-1002) 5 MindBrainEd Bulletin V4i5 Think Tank Emotion May | Page 9

Think Tank:
Emotion
Glenn Magee
Emotions across languages and textbooks
When I listen to the Brain Science Podcasts, I like to imagine the connection to my
own experiences and how I might change my teaching based on this new
information. As I listened to Barrett’s talk on how emotions are constructed, I
recalled my time working in a Japanese elementary school and the textbook we used
for 5 th graders, Hi, Friends! 1. Although the textbooks were due to change for
students from April 2018, my memory of the content relates to what Barrett refers to
as a “classic view of emotion,” and how that finds its way into textbook design.
A concise definition of this view is that our emotions occur as a reaction to events,
and result in physiological changes that can be observed, categorized, and exemplify
particular emotions. Following this assumption, it could be argued that emotion, and
observed facial and bodily changes, are in some ways universal. This makes sense to
me, as I see talented actors and actresses are adept at utilizing expressions to convey
emotion in a way that is universally understandable. The movie Inside Out (Rivera
and Docter, 2015) is an example of how Hollywood conceptualizes emotions and the
resulting physiological changes. Anger is a red bodied man with flames coming out of
his head, disgust is green, joy is gold, sadness is blue, and fear is purple. These are all
prototypical views of emotion in Western culture.
Moving back to the Hi, Friends! 1 textbook and the unit on “Feelings” for now. In this
unit, we are presented with how people act when they are hungry, happy, sleepy,
fine, tired, and sad. Each feeling is given an illustration that depicts the physical
actions associated with the word. For example, hungry is depicted as a thought
bubble containing a rice ball, and a human-like figure clutching their stomach. It
seems quite intuitive, just like the idea of universal emotions,
yet there is one particular illustration that sticks out — “I’m
fine.” In this illustration, the figure has its hands balled up,
with one arm punching the air. Now, you might disagree with
me here, but I think that usually, a simple thumbs-up sign is
the common way of showing that you feel fine. I tried it out
on a few Japanese people and they all gave me the thumbs up
sign in return. It seems that my prototypical view of “I’m fine”
is at odds with the textbook, but I have some evidence from
real people to believe I am right. Does this mean that the