What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings [Hardcover]

Jerome Kagan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300124740 | ISBN-13: 978-0300124743 | Publication Date: November 26, 2007 | Edition: 1

In this sophisticated overview of human emotions, a widely respected psychologist and author addresses the ambiguities and embraces the controversies that surround this intriguing subject. An insightful and lucid thinker, Jerome Kagan examines what exactly we do know about emotions, which popular assumptions about emotions are incorrect, and how scientific study must proceed if we are to uncover the answers to persistent and evasive questions about emotions. Integrating the findings of anthropological, psychological, and biological studies in his wide-ranging discussion, Kagan explores the evidence for great variation in the frequency and intensity of emotion among different cultures. He also discusses variations among individuals within the same culture and the influences of gender, class, ethnicity, and temperament on a person's emotional patina. In his closing chapter, the author proposes that three sources of evidence - verbal descriptions of feelings, behaviours, and measures of brain states - provide legitimate but different definitions of emotion. Translating data from one of these sources to another may not be possible, Kagan warns, and those who study emotions must accept, at least for now, that their understanding is limited to and by the domain of their information.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Dr. Kagan’s book is chock-full of interesting and clever observations as well as novel insights. It is very different from other recent books on emotion and makes a definite contribution to the field.”—Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College

(Lisa Feldman Barrett )

“Kagan’s erudition is rare, and his commentary on issues in emotion theory and research is interesting and controversial.”—Carroll E. Izard, University of Delaware

(Carroll E. Izard )

"Be prepared to read a brilliant, erudite, fascinating, and provocative work. Written by one of the few scholars who kept the study of emotion alive when once no one cared, this book tackles the results of the recent flood of emotion studies stemming from the "Affect Revolution." Professor Kagan''s book is simultaneously a critical synthesis of fact and theory in contemporary emotion studies, and a controversial set of proposals for the future. This tome may be the author''s most provocative and potentially impactful of his many books to date."—Joseph J. Campos, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

(Joseph J. Campos )

"Just when it seemed impossible to say anything new about human emotions, Jerome Kagan provides us with a fresh perspective on one of psychology''s foundational puzzles. Professor Kagan, whose productive career has been characterized by a razor-sharp intellect and at times contrarian stance, challenges investigators who are content to define emotions by their consequences and functions or constrain their study of emotions to events in the brain. Kagan believes we should stop wrangling about the definition of emotion and focus, instead, on what we can observe and describe . . . two things he had done as a research psychologist for half-century as well as anyone."—Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College, Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology at Yale University

(Peter Salovey )

About the Author

Jerome Kagan is professor of psychology emeritus and former director of the Mind/Brain Behaviour Interfaculty Initiative, Harvard University. He is the author of some 400 papers and books on developmental psychology.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (November 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300124740
• ISBN-13: 978-0300124743
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,436,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very useful book about the psychology of emotions. Not for the beginner., February 20, 2008

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BookReader333 - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings (Hardcover)

This title suggests that the book would be an introduction to emotions. But an introduction it is not. In my opinion, professor Kagan, after decades of research on emotions, has done in this book a recapitulation of many of his observations on the field. This is a commnetary on emotion research as it has been practiced by psychologists. Philosophers and other specialists have also been interested in emotions, but their work is not the focus of this book, though a few may be mentioned here and there.

Kagan is critical of many approaches that have been adopted in the field, sometimes by eminent researchers. For example, he is very skeptical about research on animals that are used to reach conclusions about humans. If rats cannot appraise feelings--but humans can-- why are emotional labels attributed to them? Why do we think that they feel "anxious" in some situations and thus make comparisons with human anxiety? He questions the way emotions are classified, labeled, and makes constructive proposals. He also takes some to task for not taking into account a larger set of explanatory variables than they are accustomed to. Culture, ehtnicity, social class, temperament, and even genetic differences in specific cases (that he describes), for example, should be accounted for by psychologists when they enroll subjects for their research. NOT that these factors have NOT been considered before, but it is rarer to find cases where they've been taken into account in the same research protocol.

Kagan loves to make analogies and his are not restricted to psychology. To make his points, he will draw parallels with modern physics, biology, ancient China, ancient Greece, Aquinas, etc., as well as ordinary day-to-day situations. This feature made the book VERY interesting to me by being more than just a psychology book. Only a handful of those analogies were opaque to me -- maybe I could not follow.

Overall this is a book best for those who have some appreciation of what has been going on in the field, including students who had an introduction to emotions as a branch of psychology. Others can gain, too, for this is not quantum physics, but it will be less easy. If you are not up to task yet, a quick solution is to precede Kagan with The Science of Emotions by Randolph Cornelius who is also a psychologist. I am not sure that the chapter on emotions found in introductory psychology texts will be enough, but it would be much better than nothing. There is also Robert C. Solomon's What Is an Emotion? He covers some of the psychological researchers on emotion, but Solomon is a philosopher, so you will also get into other orientations.

Why did I take 1 star off? Well, it's actually 1.5 star, but due to the weight of experience and concomitant maturity poured into this book, I had to round off upward rather than downward. My problem was the stuffy writing style. And Kagan paid tribute to the editor for clarifying his text! Actually, I believe him. It's hard for an editor to fundamentally change someone else's writing style in any deep fashion. (But the editor should take some responsibility for the irritating "number shifts"--they seem to be taking over the land these days. A number shift woud be something like: AN author should appeal to THEIR readers, instead of his/her/his or her/ readers.) Writing is communication. A single author who takes it upon himself to make his product translucent can save thousands of hours to thousands of readers. I am not asking for watered-down prose. I just want to absorb knowledge efficiently. There is so much to learn out there, no time to parse. I don't mean by any means that all or most of the sentences are miles long or a pain to read. But, yes, writing is an art, and there are those who convey complexity more efficiently. I reserve that extra star for them.