1st Edition

A General Theory of Emotions and Social Life

By Warren TenHouten Copyright 2007
324 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

336 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

336 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Founded upon the psychoevolutionary theories of Darwin, Plutchik and Izard, a general socioevolutionary theory of the emotions - affect-spectrum theory - classifies a wide spectrum of the emotions and analyzes them on the sociological, psychological and neurobiological levels. This neurocognitive sociology of the emotions supersedes the major theoretical perspectives developed in the... Read more

1. Introduction  2. From Darwin to Psychoevolutionary Theories of Primary and Secondary Emotions  3. The Two Pairs of Opposite Primary Emotions: Acceptance and Disgust, Joy and Sadness, Anger and Fear, Anticipation and Surprise  4. Secondary Emotions: The Four Pairs of Opposite Primary Dyads: Love and Misery, Pride and Embarrassment, Aggressiveness and Alarm, Curiosity and Cynicism  5. Secondary Emotions, Continued: The Four Pairs of Half-Opposite Secondary Dyads: Dominance and Submissiveness, Optimism and Pessimism, Delight and Disappointment, Repugnance and Contempt  6. Secondary Emotions, Continued: The Eight Tertiary Dyads: Resourcefulness and Shock, Morbidness and Resignation, Sullenness and Guilt, Anxiety and Outrage  7. Secondary Emotions, Continued: The Four Antithetical, Quaternary Dyads: Ambivalence, Catharsis, Frozenness, Confusion  8. The Sociorelational Approach to the Emotions: Four Elementary Forms of Sociality  9. Affect-Spectrum Theory: The Emotions of Rationality and of Intimacy  10. Affect-Spectrum Theory, Continued: The Emotions Linking Informal Community and Formal Society: A Typology of Four Character Structures   11. Social Identity and Social Control: Pride and Embarrassment, Pridefulness and Shame  12. Socialization and the Emotions: From Alexithymia to Symbolic Elaboration and Creativity  13. The Development of Tertiary Emotions: Jealousy, Envy, Ambition, Confidence, and Hope  14. Emotions, Violence, and the Self  15. A Partial Empirical Test of Affect-Spectrum Theory  16. Discussion

Biography

Warren D. TenHouten, UCLA Professor of Sociology, has pioneered the interdisciplinary perspective of neurocognitive sociology. In Time and Society (2005), he presented a general theory of culture and time consciousness. Here, affect-spectrum theory classifies the primary, secondary and tertiary emotions and links each to specific, elementary social relationships.