Understanding Emotions

Keith Oatley and Jennifer M. Jenkins’s best-selling book on the psychology of emotions is the most highly regarded and engaging text for the emotions course. While retaining its interdisciplinary breadth, historical insights, and engaging format, this new edition adds the expertise of outstanding researcher and dedicated teacher Dacher Keltner. The second edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect the latest research and developments in emotions and includes the following features:

• Cohesive synthesis of evolutionary and cultural approaches to emotion
• New chapters on communication of emotion, bodily changes, and appraisal
• Increased emphasis on interpersonal implications of emotions, including studies of newly discovered expressions and systems of communication
• New coverage on moral judgment, individual differences, gene-environment interactions, and positive emotions
• New coverage of subjective well-being and pro-social emotions like gratitude and compassion
• Updated references throughout reflect current research and data, including research on affective neuroscience
• A new design and pedagogical features include new integrated boxes that depict historical landmarks and historical figures, updated tables, boldfaced terms, and end-of-chapter summaries.

An Instructor’s Manual with lecture notes and teaching tips is available upon request. Please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/oatley.

Keith Oatley is Director of the Cognitive Science Program, University of Toronto. He is the author of more than 130 scholarly articles and seven books, including Emotions: A Brief History (Blackwell, 2004), and two novels.

Dacher Keltner is professor of psychology at University of California at Berkeley, and the author of more than 80 scholarly articles and one book. He received the 2000 Templeton Positive Psychology Prize for Excellence in Research, and two university-wide teaching awards at UC Berkeley.

Jennifer M. Jenkins is Professor in the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto. She is co-editor, with Keith Oatley, of Human Emotions: A Reader (Blackwell, 1998). She now heads a large research project on gene-environment interactions in children.