Why it’s Imperative We All Learn to be ‘Emotion Scientists’

Our lives are saturated with emotions – sadness, disappointment, anxiety, irritation, enthusiasm, and even tranquility. Sometimes – often – those feelings are inconvenient. They get in the way of our busy lives, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. So we do our best to ignore them. It’s everywhere, from the stiff upper lip of our country’s Puritan founders to the tough-it-out ethos of schoolyards and playgrounds. We all believe that our feelings are important and deserve to be addressed respectfully and fully. But we also think of emotions as being disruptive and unproductive – at work, at home, and everywhere else.

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Proof of our inability to deal constructively with our emotional lives is all around us. In 2015, in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Born This Way Foundation (founded by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta), we conducted a large-scale survey of twenty-two thousand teenagers from across the United States and asked them to describe how they feel while in school. Three- quarters of the words they used were negative, with “tired,” “bored,” and “stressed” topping the list.

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American youths now rank in the bottom quarter among developed nations in well- being and life satisfaction, according to a report by UNICEF. Research shows that our youths have stress levels that surpass those of adults.

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