On the Origins of Human Emotions
On the Origins of Human Emotions

Author: Jonathan Turner

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2000-06-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0804764360

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Language and culture are often seen as unique characteristics of human beings. In this book the author argues that our ability to use a wide array of emotions evolved long before spoken language and, in fact, constituted a preadaptation for the speech and culture that developed among later hominids. Long before humans could speak with words, they communicated through body language their emotional dispositions; and it is the neurological wiring of the brain for these emotional languages that represented the key evolutionary breakthrough for our species. How did natural selection work on the basic ape anatomy and neuroanatomy to create the hominid line? The author suggests that what distinguished our ancestors from other apes was the development of an increased capacity for sociality and organization, crucial for survival on the African savanna. All apes display a propensity for weak ties, individualism, mobility, and autonomy that was, and is today, useful in arboreal and woodland habitats but served them poorly when our ancestors began to move onto the African plain during the late Miocene. The challenge for natural selection was to enhance traits in the species that would foster the social ties necessary for survival in the new environment. The author suggests that the result was a development of certain areas of the primate brain that encouraged strong emotional ties, allowing our ancestors to build higher levels of social solidarity. Our basic neurological wiring continues to reflect this adaptive development. From a sociological perspective that is informed by evolutionary biology, primatology, and neurology, the book examines the current neurological bases of our emotional repertoire and their implications for our social actions.

The Book of Human Emotions
The Book of Human Emotions

Author: Tiffany Watt Smith

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 031626539X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A thoughtful, gleeful encyclopedia of emotions, both broad and outrageously specific, from throughout history and around the world. How do you feel today? Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok or filled with nakhes? Recent research suggests there are only six basic emotions. But if that makes you feel uneasy, suspicious, and maybe even a little bereft, The Book of Human Emotions is for you. In this unique book, you'll get to travel across the world and through time, learning how different cultures have articulated the human experience and picking up some fascinating new knowledge about yourself along the way. From the familiar (anger) to the foreign (zal), each entertaining and informative alphabetical entry reveals the surprising connections and fascinating facts behind our emotional lives. Whether you're in search of the perfect word to sum up that cozy feeling you get from being inside on a cold winter's night, surrounded by friends and good food (what the Dutch call gezelligheid), or wondering how nostalgia evolved from a fatal illness to enjoyable self-indulgence, Tiffany Watt Smith draws on history, anthropology, science, art, literature, music, and popular culture to find the answers. In reading The Book of Human Emotions, you'll discover feelings you never knew you had (like basorexia, the sudden urge to kiss someone) and gain unexpected insights into why you feel the way you do. Besides, aren't you curious what nginyiwarrarringu means?

A Human History of Emotion
A Human History of Emotion

Author: Richard Firth-Godbehere

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0316430862

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A sweeping exploration of the ways in which emotions shaped the course of human history, and how our experience and understanding of emotions have evolved along with us. "Eye-opening and thought-provoking!” (Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain) We humans like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, who, as a species, have relied on calculation and intellect to survive. But many of the most important moments in our history had little to do with cold, hard facts and a lot to do with feelings. Events ranging from the origins of philosophy to the birth of the world’s major religions, the fall of Rome, the Scientific Revolution, and some of the bloodiest wars that humanity has ever experienced can’t be properly understood without understanding emotions. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, art, and religious history, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes readers on a fascinating and wide ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history—from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and beyond. A Human History of Emotion vividly illustrates how our understanding and experience of emotions has changed over time, and how our beliefs about feelings—and our feelings themselves—profoundly shaped us and the world we inhabit.

Projections
Projections

Author: Karl Deisseroth

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2021-06-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1984853694

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A groundbreaking tour of the human mind that illuminates the biological nature of our inner worlds and emotions, through gripping, moving—and, at times, harrowing—clinical stories “[A] scintillating and moving analysis of the human brain and emotions.”—Nature “Beautifully connects the inner feelings within all human beings to deep insights from modern psychiatry and neuroscience.”—Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel Laureate Karl Deisseroth has spent his life pursuing truths about the human mind, both as a renowned clinical psychiatrist and as a researcher creating and developing the revolutionary field of optogenetics, which uses light to help decipher the brain’s workings. In Projections, he combines his knowledge of the brain’s inner circuitry with a deep empathy for his patients to examine what mental illness reveals about the human mind and the origin of human feelings—how the broken can illuminate the unbroken. Through cutting-edge research and gripping case studies from Deisseroth’s own patients, Projections tells a larger story about the material origins of human emotion, bridging the gap between the ancient circuits of our brain and the poignant moments of suffering in our daily lives. The stories of Deisseroth’s patients are rich with humanity and shine an unprecedented light on the self—and the ways in which it can break down. A young woman with an eating disorder reveals how the mind can rebel against the brain’s most primitive drives of hunger and thirst; an older man, smothered into silence by depression and dementia, shows how humans evolved to feel not only joy but also its absence; and a lonely Uighur woman far from her homeland teaches both the importance—and challenges—of deep social bonds. Illuminating, literary, and essential, Projections is a revelatory, immensely powerful work. It transforms our understanding not only of the brain but of ourselves as social beings—giving vivid illustrations through science and resonant human stories of our yearning for connection and meaning.

Affective Neuroscience
Affective Neuroscience

Author: Jaak Panksepp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-09-30

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 019802567X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Some investigators have argued that emotions, especially animal emotions, are illusory concepts outside the realm of scientific inquiry. However, with advances in neurobiology and neuroscience, researchers are demonstrating that this position is wrong as they move closer to a lasting understanding of the biology and psychology of emotion. In Affective Neuroscience, Jaak Panksepp provides the most up-to-date information about the brain-operating systems that organize the fundamental emotional tendencies of all mammals. Presenting complex material in a readable manner, the book offers a comprehensive summary of the fundamental neural sources of human and animal feelings, as well as a conceptual framework for studying emotional systems of the brain. Panksepp approaches emotions from the perspective of basic emotion theory but does not fail to address the complex issues raised by constructionist approaches. These issues include relations to human consciousness and the psychiatric implications of this knowledge. The book includes chapters on sleep and arousal, pleasure and fear systems, the sources of rage and anger, and the neural control of sexuality, as well as the more subtle emotions related to maternal care, social loss, and playfulness. Representing a synthetic integration of vast amounts of neurobehavioral knowledge, including relevant neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neurochemistry, this book will be one of the most important contributions to understanding the biology of emotions since Darwins The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

A Natural History of Human Emotions
A Natural History of Human Emotions

Author: Stuart Walton

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 1555848834

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A “fresh and entertaining” survey of the human emotional landscape—and how it has shifted over the centuries (Kirkus Reviews). Using Charles Darwin’s survey of emotions as a starting point, Stuart Walton’s A Natural History of Human Emotions examines the history of each of our core emotions—fear, anger, disgust, sadness, jealousy, contempt, shame, embarrassment, surprise, and happiness—and how these emotions have influenced both cultural and social history. We learn that primitive fear served as the engine of religious belief, while a desire for happiness led to humankind’s first musings on achieving a perfect utopia. Challenging the notion that human emotion has remained constant, A Natural History of Human Emotions explains why, in the last 250 years, society has changed its unwritten rules for what can be expressed in public and in private. Like An Intimate History of Humanity and Near a Thousand Tables, Walton’s A Natural History of Human Emotions is a provocative examination of human feelings and a fascinating take on how emotions have shaped our past.

Emotions in History ? Lost and Found
Emotions in History ? Lost and Found

Author: Ute Frevert

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 6155053340

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Human Emotions and the Origins of Bioethics
Human Emotions and the Origins of Bioethics

Author: Susi Ferrarello

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-06

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1000287920

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides a unique phenomenological dialogue between psychology and philosophy on the origin of bioethics that shows the importance of bringing emotions into bioethical discourse. Divided into two parts, the book begins by defining bioethics and explaining the importance of emotions in making us human, allowing us to consider life holistically. Ferrarello argues that emotions and bioethics are better served when they are combined, and that dismissing emotions as nothing more than a nuisance to our rationality has created a society that does not fit our human nature. Chapters explore how ethics relate to intimate life and how ethical agents determine themselves within their surrounding world, uniquely and interrogatively using ‘bioethics’ to consider not only medical dilemmas but also issues concerning environmental and individual well-being. By addressing personal, interpersonal, and societal problems as dynamically interconnected in bioethical problems she helps us to renew our sense of responsibility toward a good quality of life. This interdisciplinary book is invaluable reading for students of health science, psychology, and philosophy, as well as for those interested in the link between emotions and bioethical discourse from both a psychological and philosophical perspective.

Human Emotions
Human Emotions

Author: Jonathan H. Turner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-06-26

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1134089635

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This major theoretical work takes existing work on the emotions in significantly new directions. It gives a comprehensive account of emotions, beginning with general sociological principles, moving over important theory construction of social formation and applying this to a detailed and unified 'grand' theory of human emotions. Presenting a unified view of the emotions in the social universe, the book explores the relationships between emotions, social structure, and culture. Turner hypotheses how social structure and culture affect emotional arousal in humans, and vice versa. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students researching sociology of emotions, social psychology, and contemporary social theory, and is also relevant for students and researchers working in the fields of psychology and cultural studies.

The Emotional Foundations of Personality: A Neurobiological and Evolutionary Approach
The Emotional Foundations of Personality: A Neurobiological and Evolutionary Approach

Author: Kenneth L. Davis

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2018-03-27

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0393710580

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title of 2018. A novel approach to understanding personality, based on evidence that we share more than we realize with other mammals. This book presents the wealth of scientific evidence that our personality emerges from evolved primary emotions shared by all mammals. Yes, your dog feels love—and many other things too. These subcortically generated emotions bias our actions, alter our perceptions, guide our learning, provide the basis for our thoughts and memories, and become regulated over the course of our lives. Understanding personality development from the perspective of mammals is a groundbreaking approach, and one that sheds new light on the ways in which we as humans respond to life events, both good and bad. Jaak Panksepp, famous for discovering laughter in rats and for creating the field of affective neuroscience, died in April 2017. This book forms part of his lasting legacy and impact on a wide range of scientific and humanistic disciplines. It will be essential reading for anyone trying to understand how we act in the world, and the world’s impact on us.