Emotion Science Cognitive and Neuroscientific Approaches to Understanding Human Emotions

Name: Emotion Science Cognitive and Neuroscientific Approaches to Understanding Human Emotions
Price: 41.59 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780230005181

ISBN-10: 0230005187

ISBN-13: 9780230005181

Edition: 2008

Authors: Elaine Fox

List price: $66.00

This item qualifies for FREE shipping.

30 day, 100% satisfaction guarantee!

Buy new: $69.96

Marketplace

4 new & used from $41.59

what's this?

Rush Rewards U
Members Receive:

You have reached 400 XP and carrot coins. That is the daily max!

Description:

Emotions and affective processes are fundamentally important to our lives. They regulate our relationships and social interactions, they help us communicate with one another, and almost certainly help us maintain good health and prevent the onset and development of disease. The study of emotion has a long history in philosophy and psychology. However, until recently, emotion research has been a marginal activity in psychological science. In the behaviorist era, which dominated much of the twentieth century, emotion was often deemed unworthy of serious research because the field lacked objective ways to measure emotions and their associated feelings without resorting to introspection by… subjects, which is, by definition, non-behavioural. In addition, since Plato, it is easy to discern a quiet bias in the sciences against emotions or "passions," which were often posited as inferior to the higher gifts of Reason and unworthy of serious research. This view, however, has changed radically in the past few years. With the development of sophisticated imaging tools like fMRI, researchers have uncovered the centrality of emotion to our thinking and reasoning and remembering, and evidence has demonstrated that it may be misleading to posit two separate phenomena altogether, i.e., "cognition" and "emotion." These traditional categories have been shown to be highly interdependent processes that interact with each other in a dynamic way. Our memories of the past; our decisions and plans for the future; what we attend to on a moment-to-moment basis; what we think about as we daydream: all of those cognitive operations are coloured by emotions, just as emotions themselves are influenced by cognitive processes. Therefore, in order to gain a more complete understanding of the richness of our mental life we need to more fully understand the role of emotions and how these processes interact with the traditionally defined "cognitive" processes. The Science of Emotion aims to achieve this. It is the first textbook to integrate psychology and neuroscientific evidence to develop a modern understanding of emotion and the nature of the links between processes that have traditionally been considered "cognitive" and those that have traditionally been considered "emotional." While these two constructs, as discussed above, have often been treated as separate, residing in two separate areas of the brain-the neo-cortex and the limbic system, respectively,The Science of Emotionuses the latest research to show how the two phenomena are intertwined and interdependent both at neural and psychological levels. The booknbsp;contains at least one focus box per chapter that will either take an interesting question (e.g. Do we run because we are afraid, or afraid because we run?) or a more empirically-based question from everyday life (e.g. Are we more likely to remember emotional events?). Therenbsp;is also a further material website with links and more detailed descriptions of key experiments.

Book details

List price: $66.00
Copyright year: 2008
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date: 9/15/2008
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 496
Size: 6.50" wide x 9.50" long x 0.75" tall
Weight: 1.540
Language: English



List of Figures


List of Tables


List of Boxes


Preface


Acknowledgments



Introduction to Emotion Science


Different frameworks to study emotion


Neuroscience and cognitive approaches


The subject matter of emotion science


Defining affect: emotions, moods and feelings


Affect-cognition interactions


Controversies in emotion science


Plan of this book



The Nature and Measurement of Emotions, Moods and Feelings


Defining emotions and moods


Mood


Distinguishing moods and emotions


The measurement of affect


Measuring emotions


Measuring moods


The experience of emotions and moods


What and how do we feel?


Chapter summary



Individual Differences in Emotional Reactivity and Regulation: Temperament, Personality and Affective Style


Temperament


Personality


Affective style


Affect regulation strategies


Chapter summary



Categorical Approaches to the Structure of Affect


Emotions as discrete categories


Criteria for basic emotions


Overview of empirical evidence for discrete emotions


Chapter summary



Dimensional Approaches to the Structure of Affect


A dimensional view of affect


What do we mean by dimensions?


Criteria for identifying general dimensions of affect


Overview of empirical evidence for dimensions


Comparing discrete and dimensional approaches


Chapter summary



Affect-Cognition Relations: Perception, Attention and Judgment


The return of affect in psychology and neuroscience


The interaction of affect and cognition


Processing of affective information: empirical data


Chapter summary



Affect-Cognition Relations: Memory


Are affective events better remembered than neutral events?


Does affect influence memory by means of arousal or valence?


Does affect influence memory at encoding, consolidation or retrieval?


Do mood states influence memory?


Does the type of mood make a difference to memory?


Are positive and negative moods associated with different information-processing strategies?


Theoretical accounts of mood and memory interactions


Chapter summary



Individual Differences in Emotional Processing


Do cognitive biases influence emotional reactivity?


An overview of empirical evidence


Interactions between personality traits, emotions and mood states


Perception and attention


Memory


Interpretation and judgment


Neural reactivity


Genetic determinants of individual differences in emotionality


Chapter summary



Determinants of Emotional Disorders


Risk factors for anxiety and depression


Environmental events


Temperament and personality


Neurobiological factors


Cognitive factors


Genetic factors


Chapter summary



Determinants of Resilience and Well-Being


Resilience to stress


Happiness and well-being


Temperamental and personality factors


Cognitive and neurobiological factors


Neurobiological mechanisms


Chapter summary



Theoretical Overview


Key aspects of emotion science


Seven sins in the study of emotion


Multiple levels of analysis


A unifying frameword


Integrating neurobiological and cognitive models of affect


Translating basic emotion science to clinical practice


Summary


Chapter summary


References


Name Index


Subject Index