39 used & new from $1.00

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
 
Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion
 
 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.
 
  

Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "WHEN I FIRST MET DAVID, HE WAS SITTING NERvously on a small wooden chair in a psychiatrist's office..." (more)
Key Phrases: affective value system, inner genetic algorithm, long ancestral history, Miss Maynell, John Blanchard, Round Robin (more...)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)


Available from these sellers.


14 new from $8.89 23 used from $1.00 2 collectible from $19.00

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
  Hardcover, April 7, 1999 -- $8.89 $1.00
  Paperback, March 31, 2000 $17.00 $9.50 $2.88

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

by Prof. Timothy D. Wilson
4.6 out of 5 stars (29)  $14.76
The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

by Joseph Ledoux
4.2 out of 5 stars (38)  $10.80
Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious

by Gerd Gigerenzer
4.2 out of 5 stars (30)  $6.00
The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

by Robert Wright
4.1 out of 5 stars (125)  $11.56
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

by Antonio Damasio
3.6 out of 5 stars (54)  $10.88
Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How did feelings evolve? How do they develop within us? What is their function, their use to us? How does our nervous system implement them?

These four questions, posed in somewhat different form by the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Niko Tinbergen, propel psychologist Victor Johnston's well-crafted examination of human emotions. Drawing on recent advances in psychology, biology, and the cognitive sciences, he looks into such matters as the role of the emotions in psychological well-being ("the failure to develop an early emotional bond with a single caretaker leads to slow development, withdrawal, depression, and a variety of later developing social problems") and the adaptive advantages--or, at times, disadvantages--of such deep-seated inner feelings as envy and joy. Where earlier scientists were much given to exploring the emotions as responses to external stimuli, Johnston shows that "input from the external world is really not necessary for conscious experiences to occur," as experiments in dreams, sensory deprivation, and hallucinations have shown. Instead, he considers the rich inner world of the emotions as a problem of evolutionary theory, a matter of adaptation and response that favors the survival of genes. Johnston's overview of the science of emotions makes for consistently interesting reading, and it points the way to further research. --Gregory McNamee



From Publishers Weekly

The world, according to Johnston, professor of psychobiology at New Mexico State University, is dramatically different from the way in which any of us experience it. In fact, he argues, the world is a dark, silent, tasteless, odorless and colorless place. We create all that we sense: the brilliant color of a sunset, the mouthwatering sweetness of a peach, the acrid odor of rotten eggs. All of our sensual abilities, indeed our ability to feel any emotions, are best envisioned as emergent properties of the neural processes in our brain. Sugar, for example, is neither inherently sweet nor satisfying. Rather, we believe it so because over evolutionary time those most drawn to the energy in sugar were the ones most likely to survive and successfully reproduce. Johnston does an impressive job of explaining how millions of years of evolution are capable of yielding complex behaviors. He demonstrates that computers are capable of learning and developing preferences. Arguing by analogy, he concludes that human reasoning and likes and dislikes are outgrowths of the evolutionary process by which neural networks deal with rapidly changing environments. Johnston concludes his challenging book by discussing the implications this sort of evolutionary worldview has on the concept of free will.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books; illustrated edition edition (April 8, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 073820109X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0738201092
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #927,995 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

More About the Author

Victor S. Johnston
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Visit Amazon's Victor S. Johnston Page

Inside This Book (learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.




What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?


Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
 
(62)
(30)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

 

Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
5 star:
 (16)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Pleasure To Read, December 16, 1999
A very well written and tightly argued look at "the science of human emotions" and a pleasure to read. I would also commend it as a good companion to the more widely publicized book by Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens. Johnston focusses on emotions and explains consciousness, including consciousness of emotions, as an "emergent phenomenon" of the composition and arrangement of the brain, and delves no further into anatomy. Damasio picks up from there and tries to say something about how the structure and organization of the brain actually accomplishes this property. Readers may want to ponder the conceptual device of "emergence" which plays such an important part in Johnston's exposition. To say that "speed" in a car is an emergent property of the car, and does not reside in the carburetor or the transmission, does not prevent us from showing how the carburetor and transmission accomplish speed, but does help us understand that selection is working on the whole system and the arrangement of its parts and not on the individual components. Likewise with consciousness. In addition, because Johnston is rhetorically opposing the idea of a correspondence theory of the truth, he stresses the arbitrariness, other than for survival, of the neural representations of our environment, which "really" consists primarily of a whirling chaos of photons, energy particles, and electromagnetic radiations. His argument is very effective, yet somehow our brain's ability to organize this environment has allowed us to come up with pi, build bridges that don't fall down, and develop a mathematics with an amazing capacity to describe the universe; our representations do seem to give us some powerful access to something out there. Both subjects display the force of Johnston's prose, which in part can be attributed, I think, to the clarity that derives from taking a strong rhetorical stance. Throughout the book, the sense one gets is of a powerful intellect in full command of his material.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Virtual Reality, November 28, 1999
By JRK (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
Johnston is extremely convincing in his explanation of how pleasant and unpleasant sensations evolved. For example, he explains that the pleasant sensation of "sweetness" is not a property of sugar molecules, but an illusion of the brain that emerged through natural selection because sugar is a great source of energy. Using persuasive reasoning he explains such things as why rotten eggs smell bad, why tissue damage causes the illusion of pain, and why we feel complex emotions such as love and sadness. This book is a great read that may just challenge your entire view of reality.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly thought provoking, entertaining and well written., May 2, 2002
By Jeff K. "jeff4314" (Fremont, CA.) - See all my reviews
Wow. I am what could be described as a "slacker" with "some college", but I enjoy reading books about science, particularly those that aim to explain why things are the way they are...I picked up "Why we Feel" because it seemed like an interesting topic. As a matter of fact, the guy at the counter read the tile and commented "That's a good question!". I feel that this is a book everybody should read. It gives so much insight into who we are that I feel truly thankful that I read it. Feelings. What would life be without them? As the author argues, there would be no point to life at all.

This book goes a long way to answering questions like why do some things feel good and others feel bad? I would sum it up thus: There is, in reality, no point for life to exist. So, emotions are nature's way of motivating us to keep on living! When you do something that will increase your chances of reproducing, you feel good. This includes falling in love, having sex, gaining resources such as food or shelter, etc. As an example on how a negative emotion helps you live, consider if you were a cave man and you found a bone with a particular size and shape that allowed you to beat up your enemies and kill animals for food. If you lost this tool one day, you would feel deep sadness. This negative feeling would be nature punishing you for losing a valuable resource that increases your chances for survival. The author explains how emotions evolved, and other concepts such as why we consider certain characteristics as "beautiful" and certain tastes as good are really just nature's way of steering us towards what we need to reproduce.

The book is short and completely free of fluff or egotistical rambling. The author writes extremely well and keeps a nice constant pace throughout. I read this book in two sittings and will re-read it many times I'm sure. As a non-scientist I found it slightly dense at times, but it's short and interesting enough to re-read. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about why things are the way they are. If you want to learn about life, not just Human life, but your dog and animals as well, this is a wonderful book. You'll never look at yourself or other people the same way again after being exposed to what modern science has to say about the origin and purpose of human emotions. I will definately buy his next book, if there is one.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Theory is rich, convincing and clear.
The core of this book is a few chapters on the evolutionary benefit of emotion. I found the theory rich and convincing, and the writing clear; the theory explains, for example,... Read more
Published on March 5, 2003 by algo41

5.0 out of 5 stars Sugar isn't really sweet, ripe strawberries aren't red.
The 1st chapter in this book is entitled 'The Grand Illusion.' This is not some pessimistic assessment of the human condition, like we've all been fooling ourselves for naught all... Read more
Published on August 13, 2001 by Earl Dennis

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern, Understandable Cognitive Science at its Best
This book is not only an excellent introduction into the field of emotion but it is probably the only assessable modern synthesis of cognitive science with fundamental... Read more
Published on April 13, 2001 by C. Bogarad

5.0 out of 5 stars Hedonic Tone Rings True
A fabulous book - Johnston gives voice to his concept of "hedonic tone" which has roots in Maslow's idea of "hierarchy of wants" and even Elizabeth Duffy's... Read more
Published on April 12, 2001 by JAK

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring
This is the most inspiring book I read since a long time. Whereas I have never been that much impressed by evolutionary arguments in social behavior, this book gives an exciting... Read more
Published on March 15, 2001 by Bas Verplanken

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensible and insightful
After reading a lot of impressively confusing material on consciousness and intentionality, it was a relief to read such a sound and sensible account. Read more
Published on February 19, 2001 by harry s. white

5.0 out of 5 stars onward and inward
This book does what would have seemed impossible in 200 pages: coordinates the findings of two decades on emotion & consciousness under an evolutionary framework. Read more
Published on June 23, 2000 by Edward A.Cohen, MD

5.0 out of 5 stars A Head Big Enough to Make You Feel It's Lovable
I have got a son recently, and he has got a toy airplane, as well as many stuffed cartoon figures. The smile and awkward body movement of my baby always make me feel he is cute... Read more
Published on April 3, 2000 by Chestman

3.0 out of 5 stars okay
The beginning of this book got me very excited as I was expecting to hear evolutionary discussions of why we have the emotions that we have. Read more
Published on January 19, 2000 by gtfo

5.0 out of 5 stars A superbly readable discussion of the importance of feelings
This book is simply superb. Very clearly and convincingly written. By demonstrating the importance of "hedonic tone" is decision making, the author lays the foundation... Read more
Published on August 29, 1999

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   




Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.



Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.