HoldsUp

Marc Brackett

Yale University

Marc Brackett, PhD, is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. His research focuses on the science of emotional intelligence, emotion regulation, and social and emotional learning in educational and professional settings. His published work also investigates assessments of emotion perception and understanding, educator and clinician well-being, and daily affect.

14 claims checked on air: 2 context 1 overstated 9 supported 2 unverified

What they said on air

0:20:28supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Research indicates that people who actively strive to be happy all the time experience greater misery and lower well-being.

"We have research that shows that people who strive to be happy all the time actually are more miserable because it's hard to live up to that all the time." (said at 0:20:28)

Psychological research demonstrates that actively striving for or highly valuing happiness to an extreme degree is paradoxically associated with lower well-being and elevated depressive symptoms, particularly in Western contexts. For instance, studies by Ford, Mauss, et al. found that valuing happiness was associated with increased depressive symptoms and remitted major depressive disorder diagnoses.

0:20:45unverifiedvery lowHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

People who prioritize contentment over happiness experience greater well-being.

"You know, people who strive for more contentment in their life actually seem to have greater well-being." (said at 0:20:45)

No published empirical studies were located that directly evaluated or compared the specific construct of 'prioritizing contentment over happiness' with respect to well-being outcomes. While positive psychology research distinguishes between 'valuing happiness' (which can paradoxically undermine well-being due to excessive concern or unrealistic expectations) and 'prioritizing positivity' (organizing daily routines to experience positive states like contentment and joy, which predicts higher well-being), the specific claim contrasting prioritization of contentment directly against happiness has not been formally verified.

0:28:15overstatedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Research shows that women are much less likely than men to suppress or deny emotions and much more likely to ruminate.

"Interestingly enough, for women, what the research shows is that much less likely to suppress or deny, much more likely to ruminate." (said at 0:28:15)

Research on emotion regulation generally indicates that women report higher levels of rumination than men, whereas men tend to report higher use of expressive emotional suppression. However, describing women as 'much less likely' to suppress and 'much more likely' to ruminate overstates the typical magnitude of these gender differences, which are generally small to moderate. Furthermore, findings vary depending on the specific type of emotion and suppression measured; for example, some cross-cultural studies observe that women report higher suppression of specific emotions like anger, and that sex differences in regulation strategies can be attenuated after controlling for baseline depressive symptoms.

0:35:33supportedlowHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Fathers use more emotion and feeling words when speaking with their daughters than with their sons.

"even the way fathers talk to their boy children, you know, is different. You know, it's the toughen up. It's the da da da use more feeling words with their with girls than with boys." (said at 0:35:33)

Observational and naturalistic audio-recording studies demonstrate that fathers tend to use more emotion- and feeling-related words (such as language related to sadness and overall emotion words) when interacting with daughters compared to sons, particularly during early childhood and reminiscing tasks, though effects can vary depending on child age and conversation context.

0:45:15unverifiedvery lowHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

In a longitudinal study during the COVID-19 pandemic, school staff frustration levels were 40% lower in schools where leaders were skilled at self-regulation and co-regulation.

"I found in my research, for example, that managers and leaders who are good co-regulators, that for example, during the pandemic, I did this longitudinal study, and I found that in schools in particular where I do a lot of work, that when a teacher perceive their leader as both self-regulated and who was good at co-regulating... Frustration levels were 40% lower in schools where there were leaders with these skills." (said at 0:45:15)

No published study indexed in PubMed or Europe PMC was identified that reports a specific 40% reduction in school staff frustration levels associated with school leaders skilled in self-regulation and co-regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic. While emotional intelligence and leadership regulation in education are topics of ongoing study (e.g., work from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence), this specific longitudinal finding could not be verified in the biomedical and psychological literature indexed in these databases. This does not prove the claim is false, but it remains unverified against peer-reviewed records.

0:55:30supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Being emotionally flooded causes individuals to revert to automatic, habitual reactions rather than conscious, deliberate responses.

"Because we become more automatic when we're flooded with our emotions, we rely more on habits and usually bad habits." (said at 0:55:30)

Extensive cognitive neuroscience and neuroendocrine research demonstrates that acute stress and high emotional/autonomic arousal prompt a shift from goal-directed, deliberate decision-making (mediated by the prefrontal cortex) to habitual, automatic stimulus-response behaviors (mediated by the dorsal striatum). Experimental human studies demonstrate that acute stress or combined glucocorticoid and noradrenergic activation impairs explicit action-outcome knowledge and renders behavior insensitive to outcome devaluation.

1:02:10supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Emotions are constructed in the brain based on an individual's past experiences and learned associations.

"we construct these emotions in our brains based on our experiences." (said at 1:02:10)

The claim accurately describes the core framework of the Theory of Constructed Emotion (and psychological constructionist models of emotion in neuroscience). Under this model, emotions are not innate, discrete entities generated by dedicated brain circuits, but are constructed via predictive brain processes that categorize interoceptive sensations using conceptual knowledge formed from an individual's past experiences and learned associations. Neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience studies provide empirical evidence supporting constructionist accounts over classical discrete emotion models.

1:05:34needs contextlowHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Excessive introspection leads to rumination.

"But just like anything over introspection leads to rumination." (said at 1:05:34)

Psychological literature distinguishes between two main forms of dispositional introspection or private self-focused attention: self-reflection (an epistemic, exploratory focus on internal states) and self-rumination (repetitive, passive focusing on distress and self-evaluative threat). Longitudinal and structural equation modeling indicates that higher levels of self-reflection prospectively predict increases in self-rumination ('the self-absorption paradox'), because individuals who engage heavily in introspection frequently drift into ruminative processing unless accompanied by psychological insight and effective emotion regulation.

1:12:01supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Distinct emotional categories such as anger and disappointment, envy and jealousy, and anxiety and fear represent distinct psychological constructs.

"Anger is not the same as disappointment. Envy is not the same as jealousy. Happiness is not the same as contentment. Anxiety, stress, pressure, and fear, and overwhelmed are all different." (said at 1:12:01)

Affective science and psychological research firmly establish that discrete emotion categories (such as anger vs. disappointment, envy vs. jealousy, and anxiety vs. fear) represent distinct psychological constructs. Research on emotional granularity (also called emotion differentiation) demonstrates that individuals distinguish and categorize these discrete emotional states with functional, behavioral, and clinical significance.

1:36:53supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Heart rate acceleration and neurochemical release patterns during high excitement share similar physiological activation characteristics with anxiety.

"Activation is activation. So your heart rate and your different chemicals get released when you're super excited and when you're anxious. Activation might be the same." (said at 1:36:53)

Psychophysiological models and ambulatory biosignal studies demonstrate that high-arousal states of differing valence—such as excitement (positive) and anxiety/fear (negative)—share underlying autonomic sympathetic activation patterns, including heart rate acceleration, reduced heart rate variability, and sympathoadrenal release of adrenaline/noradrenaline.

1:42:15supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Approximately 20% of adolescents report using artificial intelligence technology as a therapist or companion.

"The thing that I'm most concerned about is that about 20% of adolescents now report using technology AI as a therapist, you know, as a companion." (said at 1:42:15)

A nationally representative survey of US adolescents and young adults (aged 12-21 years) published in JAMA Pediatrics found that 19.2% (approximately 1 in 5, or ~20%) reported using AI chatbots for mental health advice. Among those seeking advice from AI chatbots, over 40% used them at least monthly.

1:44:50supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Research demonstrates that rates of anxiety, stress, and depression are consistently increasing.

"There's research, you know, anxiety, stress, and depression are increasing consistently." (said at 1:44:50)

Large-scale epidemiological studies, national health surveillance datasets (such as NHANES and NHIS in the United States), and global burden analyses consistently demonstrate upward secular trends in the prevalence, diagnosis, and burden of depression and anxiety, particularly among adolescents and young adults over the past several decades.

2:09:40supportedmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Emotional intelligence skills predict important life outcomes, including well-being, leadership effectiveness, decision-making, and mental health outcomes.

"And I can show you my own and thousands of other studies where these skills predict things that we care about in life, whether it's well-being, whether it's leadership, whether it's decision-making, whether it's just mental health outcomes. And so, I kind of have incontrovertible evidence for the effectiveness of it." (said at 2:09:40)

A massive second-order meta-analysis synthesizing 62 meta-analyses (encompassing over 3,000 studies and 1 million participants) confirmed that emotional intelligence (EI) is robustly and positively associated with key life outcomes and human flourishing (r = 0.28). Significant favorable associations were identified across workplace outcomes (including performance/leadership), cognitive functioning/decision-making, psychological adjustment/well-being, and mental health outcomes across diverse age and cultural groups.

2:15:30needs contextmoderateHow to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

Listening to individuals' personal stories significantly reduces social and demographic bias and alters interpersonal judgments of warmth and approachability.

"And what we found was that people were very judgmental based on race, based on if they were holding a gun or not... And then we tested people afterwards and we found that people had completely different judgments of people after hearing them and listening to their stories." (said at 2:15:30)

Experimental studies in social psychology confirm that engaging with personal narratives and perspective-taking ('experience-taking') can reduce stereotype application and improve attitudes toward outgroup members. However, the evidence indicates that these effects are highly conditional on narrative framing (such as whether outgroup identity is disclosed early or late), individual compliance with perspective-taking, and the specific dimension of bias being evaluated, with some interventions showing mixed efficacy or potential backfire effects.

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