Encounters With Emotions

Spanning Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Encounters with Emotions investigates experiences of face-to-face transcultural encounters from the seventeenth century to the present and the emotional dynamics that helped to shape them. Each of the case studies collected here investigates fascinating historiographical questions that arise from the study of emotion, from the strategies people have used to interpret and understand each other’s emotions to the roles that emotions have played in obstructing communication across cultural divides. Together, they explore the cultural aspects of nature as well as the bodily dimensions of nurture and trace the historical trajectories that shape our understandings of current cultural boundaries and effects of globalization.

A study of the phenomenon of emotion contagion, or the communication of mood to others.

This authoritative handbook reviews the breadth of current knowledge about positive emotions: their nature, functions, and consequences for individuals and society. Specific emotions are analyzed in depth, including happiness, pride, romantic love, compassion, gratitude, awe, challenge, and hope. Major theoretical perspectives are presented and cutting-edge research methods explained. The volume addresses neurobiological and physiological aspects of positive emotions as well as their social and intrapersonal contexts. Implications for physical health, coping, and psychopathology are explored, as are connections to organizational functioning and consumer behavior.

This book investigates how anthropologists can make use of the emotions fieldwork generates within them to deepen their understanding of the communities they study.

We all have our own ways of handling stressful situations without letting emotions get the best of us, but some ways of coping work better than others. Short-term fixes that help us avoid or numb our emotions may temporarily alleviate sadness and anger, but can also end up causing anxiety, depression, chronic anger, and even physical health problems. If you struggle with overwhelming emotions and feel trapped by unhealthy patterns, this workbook is your ticket out. Mind and Emotions is a revolutionary universal treatment program for all emotional disorders that helps you discover which of the seven problematic coping styles is keeping you trapped in a cycle of emotional pain. Instead of working on difficulties like anxiety, anger, shame, and depression one by one, you’ll treat the root of all your emotional suffering at once. Drawing on evidence-based skills from cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy, this workbook offers all the techniques you need to manage unwelcome feelings in effective and productive ways. Learn and practice the most effective coping skills: Clarifying and acting on your core values Mindfulness and acceptance Detaching from negative thoughts Self-soothing and relaxation exercises Assertiveness and interpersonal skills Gradually facing your strong emotions This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties.

A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of the Year * One of KCRW’s Best Reads of the Year * A Next Big Idea Club Top 21 Psychology Book of the Year * One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year A pioneer of cultural psychology argues that emotions are not innate, but made as we live our lives together. “How are you feeling today?” We may think of emotions as universal responses, felt inside, but in Between Us, acclaimed psychologist Batja Mesquita asks us to reconsider them through the lens of what they do in our relationships, both one-on-one and within larger social networks. From an outside-in perspective, readers will understand why pride in a Dutch context does not translate well to the same emotion in North Carolina, or why one’s anger at a boss does not mean the same as your anger at a partner in a close relationship. By looking outward at relationships at work, school, and home, we can better judge how our emotions will be understood, how they might change a situation, and how they change us. Brilliantly synthesizing original psychological studies and stories from peoples across time and geography, Between Us skillfully argues that acknowledging differences in emotions allows us to find common ground, humanizing and humbling us all for the better.

Coming to terms with emotions and how they influence human behaviour, seems to be of the utmost importance to societies that are obsessed with everything “neuro.” On the other hand, emotions have become an object of constant individual and social manipulation since “emotional intelligence” emerged as a buzzword of our times. Reflecting on this burgeoning interest in human emotions makes one think of how this interest developed and what fuelled it. From a historian’s point of view, it can be traced back to classical antiquity. But it has undergone shifts and changes which can in turn shed light on social concepts of the self and its relation to other human beings (and nature). The volume focuses on the historicity of emotions and explores the processes that brought them to the fore of public interest and debate.

This volume contributes to the ongoing study of the forces that shape the functioning of individual interpersonal workplace relationships, and it demonstrates the complex interplay between emotion, cognitive processes, brain functioning and contextual factors at multiple levels of workplace life.

Peter Goldie opens the path to a deeper understanding of our emotional lives through a lucid philosophical exploration of this surprisingly neglected topic. He illuminates the phenomena of emotion by drawing not only on philosophy but also on literature and science. He considers the roles of culture and evolution in the development of our emotional capabilities. He examines the links between emotion, mood, and character, and places the emotions in the context of such related phenomena as consciousness, thought, feeling, and imagination. He explains how it is that we are able to make sense of our own and other people's emotions, and how we can explain the very human things which emotions lead us to do. A key theme of The Emotions is the idea of a personal perspective or point of view, contrasted with the impersonal stance of the empirical sciences. Goldie argues that it is only from the personal point of view that thoughts, reasons, feelings, and actions come into view. He suggests that there is a tendency for philosophers to over-intellectualize the emotions, and investigates how far it is possible to explain emotions in terms of rationality. Over-intellectualizing can also involve neglecting the centrality of feelings, and Goldie shows how to put them where they belong, as part of the intentionality of emotional experience, directed towards the world from a point of view. Goldie argues that the various elements of emotional experience—including thought, feeling, bodily change, and expression—are tied together in a narrative structure. To make sense of one's emotional life one has to see it as part of a larger unfolding narrative. The narrative is not simply an interpretative framework of a life: it is what that life is. Goldie concludes by applying these ideas in a close study of one particular emotion: jealousy. This fascinating book gives an accessible but penetrating exploration of a subject that is important but mysterious to all of us. Any reader interested in emotion, and its role in our understanding of our lives, will find much to think about here.