Emotional Ignorance with Dean Burnett

The Evolving Leader

In this episode of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with neuroscientist, lecturer, author, blogger, podcaster, pundit, science communicator and comedian Dr Dean Burnett. Previously employed as a psychiatry tutor and lecturer at the Cardiff University Centre for Medical Education, Dean is currently an honorary research associate at Cardiff Psychology School, as well as a Visiting Industry Fellow at Birmingham City University.

Dean is currently a full-time author, previously known for his satirical science column ‘Brain Flapping‘ at the Guardian, which ran from 2012 to 2018 he went on to write his first (the hugely successful) book ‘The Idiot Brain‘. He has since written ‘The Happy Brain’, ‘Why Your Parents are Driving You Up The Wall’ and his most recent book ‘Emotional Ignorance’.

Referenced during this episode:

The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To (2017)

The Happy Brain: The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why (2018)

Emotional Ignorance: Misadventures in the Science of Emotion (2024)

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)
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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. How do you describe yourself? (00:04:42)

3. How did you get into this work? (00:06:59)

4. Can you tell us why you wrote your latest book ‘Emotional Ignorance’? (00:10:11)

5. You start your latest book in ancient Greece where thought leaders of the time were first to acknowledge emotion as a concept with scientific validity. (00:16:01)

6. We often miss two things when discussing emotional intelligence, firstly creating the space to allow people to experience their emotions and secondly what emotions are actually for. Where has your research taken you in your thinking? (00:21:20)

7. Can we talk about how emotions and motivations work together? (00:26:10)

8. While you were writing the book, did you start to see your motivations change, or perhaps you understood them differently as a result of your reflections writing the book? (00:32:36)

9. Many of us think about our emotions in a binary way where positively felt emotions are good, and negatively experienced emotions are bad. What can we do to become more open to a wider breadth of emotions? (00:36:15)

10. Can we talk about decision making? (00:42:11)

11. What role do emotions play in our ability to encode and recall events? (00:47:41)

12. How do we make this work for us? (00:52:17)

13. What is humour solving for from an emotional perspective? (00:56:06)

14. How does your understanding of emotions help us to navigate the new technologies that are shaping the world? (01:00:31)

15. Do you have a take away for leaders that you would like to see them consider, adopt or challenge themselves in what you’ve come to understand around emotions? (01:04:30)