Numb Expert or Enthusiastic Novice?

On Enlightenment and Disenchantment

A new paper (h/t Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution) states that expertise correlates with emotional numbness. The ability to process and categorize information entails emotional suppression, the authors claim. Connoisseurs were originally motivated by joy, but as they become more fine-tuned in their understanding of their domain, they lost their origina…