The Dutch social psychologist Batja Mesquita has said that emotions can be thought of as “relational acts between people,” rather than as simply mental states that reside within us. Emotions require exertion—they are expressed outwardly, so that they can make something happen. In addition, “many of our emotion terms are references to states of the body—we’re downcast, bent out of shape, head over heels, shaken up, down in the mouth,” according to the philosopher Nikhil Krishnan, who wrote a magazine story about Mesquita’s work. Our muscles showcase our inner lives in more ways than we might
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