Investigates the history of emotions across cultures as well as the evolutionary history of emotions and of emotional development across an individual's life span. This title examines key topics such as emotional intelligence, emotion and the brain, and emotional disorders.

Originally published in 1978, this study examines the shortcomings of some theoretical approaches to psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms at the time. Keith Oatley illustrates the extent of these shortcomings by showing how inefficient brain researchers - using their present approaches - would be in trying to understand a computer, which is considerably simpler than the human brain. He concludes that we need better theories than those usually espoused in psychology, and goes on to expound a theory of cognitive representation and inference in perception, which began with Helmholtz...