The first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding sentient behavior—a theory that characterizes perception, planning, and action in terms of probabilistic inference. Developed by theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston over years of groundbreaking research, active inference provides an integrated perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior that is increasingly used across multiple disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Active inference puts the action into perception. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of active inference, covering theory, applications, and cognitive domains. Active inference is a “first principles” approach to understanding behavior and the brain, framed in terms of a single imperative to minimize free energy. The book emphasizes the implications of the free energy principle for understanding how the brain works. It first introduces active inference both conceptually and formally, contextualizing it within current theories of cognition. It then provides specific examples of computational models that use active inference to explain such cognitive phenomena as perception, attention, memory, and planning.

Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience, Volume 1: Theories of Emotion, presents broad theoretical perspectives representing all major schools of thought in the study of the nature of emotion. The contributions contained in the book are characterized under three major headings - evolutionary context, psychophysiological context, and dynamic context. Subjects that are discussed include general psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion; the affect system; the biology of emotions and other feelings; and emotions as transitory social roles. Psychologists, sociobiologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, ethologists, and students the allied fields will find the text a good reference material.

A Theory of Feelings examines the problem of human feelings, widely understood, from phenomenological, analytical, and historical perspectives. It begins with an analysis of drives and affects, and pursues the nature of 'feeling' itself, in all of its variability, through a close study of the distinctive categories of the emotions, emotional dispositions, orientive feelings, and the pasions. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and cognitive science.

Patterns of Emotions: A New Analysis of Anxiety and Depression provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of anxiety and depression phenomena experienced in some degree by everyone and in crippling intensity by many. This book is a sequel to The Face of Emotion (Izard, 1971), which presented a general conceptual framework for the study of the personality, a theory of the emotions, and evidence for the universality of the fundamental emotions of interest, joy, surprise, distress, anger, disgust, contempt, shame, and fear. The book defines the problems of anxiety and depression, in the framework of differential emotion theory, as combinations or patterns of interacting fundamental emotions and bodily feelings. The differential emotion theory of anxiety and depression is compared with psychoanalytic theory, cognitive theory, and biogenetic theory. A number of studies are presented which support the differential emotion analysis of anxiety and depression. The book also presents studies of various life situations in which a particular fundamental emotion is dominant. What has been found repeatedly is that, in each such situation, the dominant emotion occurs in a pattern of dynamically related fundamental emotions. The patterns for a variety of commonly experienced and universal emotion situations are presented and discussed.

Timely and authoritative, this volume reviews the breadth of current knowledge on the self-conscious emotions and their role in psychological and social functioning. Leading investigators approach the subject from multiple levels of analysis, ranging from basic brain mechanisms to complex social processes. Chapters present compelling advances in research on the most fundamental self-conscious emotions: embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, pride, and shame. Addressed are neural and evolutionary mechanisms, developmental processes, cultural differences and similarities, and influences on a wide array of social behaviors and personality processes. A unique chapter on assessment describes and evaluates the full range of available measures.

Emotions are complex and multifaceted phenomena. Although they have been examined from a variety of perspectives, the study of the interaction between cognition and emotion has always occupied a unique position within emotion research. Many philosophers and psychologists have been fascinated by the relationship between thinking and feeling. During the past 30 years, research on the relationship between cognition and emotion has boomed and so many studies on this topic have been published that it is difficult to keep track of the evidence. This book fulfils the need for a review of the existing evidence on particular aspects of the interplay between cognition and emotion. The book assembles a collection of state-of-the-art reviews of the most important topics in cognition and emotion research: emotion theories, feeling and thinking, the perception of emotion, the expression of emotion, emotion regulation, emotion and memory, and emotion and attention. By bringing these reviews together, this book presents a unique overview of the knowledge that has been generated in the past decades about the many and complex ways in which cognition and emotion interact. As such, it provides a useful tool for both students and researchers alike, in the fields of social, clinical and cognitive psychology.

The problem of development is central in the study of emotional life for two basic reasons. First, emotional life so clearly changes (dramatically in the early years) with new emotional reactions emerging against the backdrop of an increasing sensitivity to context and with self-regulation of emotion emerging from a striking dependence on regulatory assistance from caregivers. Such changes demand developmental analysis. At the same time, understanding such profound changes will surely inform our understanding of the nature of development more generally. The complexity of emotional change, when grasped, will reveal the elusive nature of development itself. At the outset, we know that development is complex. We must take seriously what is present at any given phase, including the newborn period, because a developmental analysis disallows something emerging from noth ing. Still, it is equally nondevelopmental to posit that new forms of new processes were simply present in their precursors. Rather, development is characterized by transformations in which more complex structures and organization "emerge" from new integration of prior components and new capacities. These new forms and organizations cannot be specified from prior conditions but are due to transactions of the evolving organism with its environment over time. They are not simply in the genome, and they are not simply conditioned by the environment. They are the result of the develop mental process.

The most comprehensive single volume ever published on the subject, the Handbook of Personality Psychology is the end-all, must-have reference work for personality psychologists. This handbook discusses the development and measurement of personality as well as biological and social determinants, dynamic personality processes, the personality's relation to the self, and personality in relation to applied psychology. Authored by the field's most respected researchers, each chapter provides a concise summary of the subject to date. Topics include such areas as individual differences, stability of personality, evolutionary foundations of personality, cross-cultural perspectives, emotion, psychological defenses, and the connection between personality and health. Intended for an advanced audience, the Handbook of Personality Psychology will be your foremost resource in this diverse field.Chapter topics include:* Nature of personality psychology* Conceptual and measurement issues in personality* Developmental issues* Biological determinants of personality* Social determinants of personality* Dynamic personality processes* Personality and the self* The Five Factor Model* Applied psychology

Music's ability to express and arouse emotions is a mystery that has fascinated both experts and laymen at least since ancient Greece. The predecessor to this book 'Music and Emotion' (OUP, 2001) was critically and commercially successful and stimulated much further work in this area. In the years since publication of that book, empirical research in this area has blossomed, and the successor to 'Music and Emotion' reflects the considerable activity in this area. The Handbook of Music and Emotion offers an 'up-to-date' account of this vibrant domain. It provides comprehensive coverage of the many approaches that may be said to define the field of music and emotion, in all its breadth and depth. The first section offers multi-disciplinary perspectives on musical emotions from philosophy, musicology, psychology, neurobiology, anthropology, and sociology. The second section features methodologically-oriented chapters on the measurement of emotions via different channels (e.g., self report, psychophysiology, neuroimaging). Sections three and four address how emotion enters into different aspects of musical behavior, both the making of music and its consumption. Section five covers developmental, personality, and social factors. Section six describes the most important applications involving the relationship between music and emotion. In a final commentary, the editors comment on the history of the field, summarize the current state of affairs, as well as propose future directions for the field. The only book of its kind, The Handbook of Music and Emotion will fascinate music psychologists, musicologists, music educators, philosophers, and others with an interest in music and emotion (e.g., in marketing, health, engineering, film, and the game industry). It will be a valuable resource for established researchers in the field, a developmental aid for early-career researchers and postgraduate research students, and a compendium to assist students at various levels. In addition, as with its predecessor, it will also attract interest from practising musicians and lay readers fascinated by music and emotion.

It has long been clear that the way in which people interpret the world affects our emotional reactions. What has been less clear is exactly how such different interpretations lead to different emotions. This is the central question addressed by The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Taking a cognitive science perspective, a systematic account is presented of the cognitive structures that underlie a wide range of different emotions. Detailed proposals about the factors that affect intensity are also offered. The authors propose three broad classes of emotions, each corresponding to a different attentional focus. One class consists of reactions to events, one of reactions to the actions of agents, and one of reactions to objects. By basing their analysis of the antecedents of emotions on an analysis of the perceived situational conditions that elicit them, the authors offer the prospect of accounting for variations in the emotions of different individuals, different cultures, and perhaps even different species.