The character arc of Lisa Feldman Barrett
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born in 1963 in Toronto, Ontario, to a working poor family, and the first member of her extended family to attend university. Between then and now sit honours at the University of Toronto, a doctorate in clinical psychology at Waterloo begun with the goal of becoming a therapist, eight failed attempts to replicate a simple experiment and the realisation of what they actually showed, a clinical internship, professorships at three universities, a founding editorship, a learned society co-founded, a Guggenheim Fellowship and two national awards. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Lisa Feldman Barrett?
Eight failures in a row, and the eighth one was the finding.
She was born in Toronto to a working poor family and was the first person in her extended family to go to university. That is the sentence to hold on to, because everything that follows is a career at the very top of a field that mostly recruits from the opposite background.
She graduated from the University of Toronto with honours and went to Waterloo for a doctorate in clinical psychology, intending to become a therapist. Then a puzzle got in the way. As a graduate student she tried eight times to replicate a simple experiment and failed every time. Most people conclude at that point that they are not much good at this. She eventually realised that her apparent failures were in fact successfully replicating a phenomenon nobody had described yet.
That realisation became her life's work: understanding the nature of emotion in the brain. Over two decades she moved out of clinical psychology and through social psychology, psychophysiology, cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience, which is four fields, and held professorships at Penn State, Boston College and Northeastern.
She is now a Distinguished Professor at Northeastern, where she co-directs an interdisciplinary affective science laboratory. She is founding editor in chief of a journal on emotion with a colleague, and co-founded a society for affective science with another. She has a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions for 2021, and a fellowship award from the Association for Psychological Science for 2025. She cites William James, Wundt and Darwin as her influences, which tells you she is arguing with the founders of the field, not with her contemporaries.
The moments
Lisa Feldman Barrett's timeline.
The 1980s
The first in the family
Milestone, and it changed everything. Nobody in the whole extended family had been before.
Honours at Toronto
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Out with honours, from the university nobody in her family had attended.
A plan to be a therapist
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The plan was a practice and a couch, not a laboratory.
The 1990s
Eight times, it failed
Setback, and it changed everything. Eight attempts at one simple experiment, and eight failures.
Give up, or look again
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: look at the failures again, taken, or get back on the clinical track. The phenomenon she found became her life's work and a distinguished chair.
The failures were the finding
Milestone, and it changed everything. She looked at the failures once more and found something nobody had named.
A clinical internship, then out
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She finished the clinical training, and then left clinical work behind.
Four fields in twenty years
Milestone, and it changed everything. She kept moving field until she found one that could answer the question.
The 2000s
A journal, and a society
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She did not join the field. She built the institutions of it.
The 2010s
Her own laboratory
Milestone, and it changed everything. A distinguished chair, and a laboratory with her question in the title.
A Guggenheim
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Arguing with the founders of the field rather than with her colleagues.
The 2020s
Two national awards
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The two biggest awards the field gives, four years apart.
The laboratory is still running and the argument with the founders of the field is still going. What she set moving started as eight failed experiments by a graduate student from a working poor family who was supposed to become a therapist, and who looked at the failures one more time.
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Sources
- Lisa Feldman Barrett, English Wikipedia biography.
- Northeastern University records for her chair and the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory.
- American Psychological Association and Association for Psychological Science award records for 2021 and 2025.