Emotions 2.0: The Benefits of Mixed Emotions
Sometimes we feel just one single feeling with overwhelming force. We're joyously happy. We're crushingly sad. But sometimes it's more complicated than that: We feel happy and sad at the same time. This week, we revisit a favorite 2022 episode with psychologist Naomi Rothman, who shares her research on the mixed emotion of ambivalence. She explores how being of two minds changes the way we think, and how it changes the way others see us.
- Duration
- 58m
- Broadcast on
- 04 Nov 2024
- Audio Format
- other
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Sometimes we feel just one single feeling with overwhelming force. We're joyously happy. We're crushingly sad. But sometimes it's more complicated than that: We feel happy and sad at the same time. This week, we revisit a favorite 2022 episode with psychologist Naomi Rothman, who shares her research on the mixed emotion of ambivalence. She explores how being of two minds changes the way we think, and how it changes the way others see us.
Did you catch the first two episodes in our Emotions 2.0 series? You can find them in this podcast feed, or on our website, hiddenbrain.org. Thanks for listening!
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- This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. In high school, Naomi Rothman was a shy teenager. That is, until she laced up her cleats and stepped on the field for her travel soccer team. Surrounded by teammates she loved, Naomi became a completely different person. - We were called the Red Hot Chili Peppers and it was very meaningful to me because I created these really strong friendships and it gave me a lot of confidence, it gave me a sense of self-worth and self-esteem and I really strongly identified with this team. - There was just one catch. - The players on this team predominantly came from the east side of town and played at Harbor High. - Naomi School, Santa Cruz High, was on the west side of our hometown of Santa Cruz, California. - And so during our high school season, we had to play against each other and someone always had to lose. - Harbor and Santa Cruz were always among the top contenders. The rivalry between the schools was intense. - Every game we played against one another was high stakes and these games were some of the most emotionally fraught games that I ever played. And the reason was that I loved these players. I had this deep, genuine affection for the people that I was trying to beat. - The same player she had fought alongside as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers were now trying to crush her when Harbor High faced Santa Cruz. Her friends had become her frenemies. Naomi Rothman never forgot what that early experience felt like. Today, she's a psychologist who studies what happens to our minds when we feel like we are being emotionally pulled in opposite directions. - It's absolutely an uncomfortable state. In fact, that will then kind of set the stage for how you engage with your environment, which is essentially to try to get rid of that feeling of discomfort. - The pain, paralysis and promise of mixed emotions. This week on Hidden Brain. - Support for Hidden Brain comes from Instagram. Instagram teen accounts, automatic protections, limit who can contact teens, the content they can see and the time they spend on the app.
Transcription truncated.
Sometimes we feel just one single feeling with overwhelming force. We're joyously happy. We're crushingly sad. But sometimes it's more complicated than that: We feel happy and sad at the same time. This week, we revisit a favorite 2022 episode with psychologist Naomi Rothman, who shares her research on the mixed emotion of ambivalence. She explores how being of two minds changes the way we think, and how it changes the way others see us.