Emotion is once again at the forefront of research in social psychology and personality. The Handbook of Communication and Emotion provides a comprehensive look at the questions and answers of interest in the field: How are specific emotions (fear, jealousy, anger, love) communicated? How does the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of this communication affect relationships? How is the communication of emotion utilized to deceive, or persuade, others? This important reference work is edited by top researchers in the field of communication and authored by a who's who in emotion and communication. - Provides a comprehensive look at the role of communication in emotion - Includes contributions from top researchers in the field of communications - Examines how specific emotions are communicated - Includes important new research on the effect of communication on relationships

Recognized as the definitive reference, this handbook brings together leading experts from multiple psychological subdisciplines to examine one of today's most dynamic areas of research. Coverage encompasses the biological and neuroscientific underpinnings of emotions, as well as developmental, social and personality, cognitive, and clinical perspectives. The volume probes how people understand, experience, express, and perceive affective phenomena and explores connections to behavior and health across the lifespan. Concluding chapters present cutting-edge work on a range of specific emotions. Illustrations include 10 color plates. New to This Edition *Chapters on the mechanisms, processes, and influences that contribute to emotions (such as genetics, the brain, neuroendocrine processes, language, the senses of taste and smell). *Chapters on emotion in adolescence, older age, and in neurodegenerative dementias. *Chapters on facial expressions and emotional body language. *Chapters on stress, health, gratitude, love, and empathy. *Many new authors and topics; extensively revised with the latest theoretical and methodological innovations.

This authoritative handbook reviews the breadth of current knowledge about positive emotions: their nature, functions, and consequences for individuals and society. Specific emotions are analyzed in depth, including happiness, pride, romantic love, compassion, gratitude, awe, challenge, and hope. Major theoretical perspectives are presented and cutting-edge research methods explained. The volume addresses neurobiological and physiological aspects of positive emotions as well as their social and intrapersonal contexts. Implications for physical health, coping, and psychopathology are explored, as are connections to organizational functioning and consumer behavior.

In times of a worldwide pandemic, the election of a new US president, "MeToo," and "Fridays for Future," to name but a few examples, one thing becomes palpable: the emotional impact of media on individuals and society cannot be underestimated. The relations between media, people, and society are to a great extent based on human emotions. Emotions are essential in understanding how media messages are processed and how media affect individual and social behavior as well as public social life. Adopting a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach to the study of emotions in the context of media, the second, entirely revised and updated, edition of Routledge International Handbook of Emotions and Media comprises areas such as evolutionary psychology, media psychology, media sociology, cultural studies, media entertainment, and political and digital communication. Leading experts from across the globe explore cutting-edge research on the role of emotion in selecting and processing media contents, the emotional consequences of media use, politics and public emotion, emotions in political communication and persuasion, as well as emotions in digital, interactive, and virtual encounters. This compelling and authoritative Handbook is an essential reference tool for scholars and students of media, communication science, media psychology, emotion, cognitive and social psychology, cultural studies, media sociology, and related fields.

The impact of mass media on individuals and society is to a great extent based on human emotions. Emotions, in turn, are essential in understanding how media messages are processed as well as media’s impact on individual and social behavior and public social life. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of emotions within a mass media context, the Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media addresses areas such as evolutionary psychology, media entertainment, sociology, cultural studies, media psychology, political communication, persuasion, and new technology. Leading experts from across the globe explore cutting-edge research on issues including the evolutionary functions of mediated emotions, emotions and media entertainment , measurements of emotions within the context of mass media, media violence, fear-evoking media, politics and public emotions, features , forms and functions of emotions beyond the message, and provide the reader a glimpse into future generations of media technology. This compelling and authoritative Handbook is an essential reference tool for scholars and students of media, communication studies, media psychology, emotions, cultural studies, sociology, and other related disciplines.

Introduced one hundred years ago, film has since become part of our lives. For the past century, however, the experience offered by fiction films has remained a mystery. Questions such as why adult viewers cry and shiver, and why they care at all about fictional characters -- while aware that they contemplate an entirely staged scene -- are still unresolved. In addition, it is unknown why spectators find some film experiences entertaining that have a clearly aversive nature outside the cinema. These and other questions make the psychological status of emotions allegedly induced by the fiction film highly problematic. Earlier attempts to answer these questions have been limited to a few genre studies. In recent years, film criticism and the theory of film structure have made use of psychoanalytic concepts which have proven insufficient in accounting for the diversity of film induced affect. In contrast, academic psychology -- during the century of its existence -- has made extensive study of emotional responses provoked by viewing fiction film, but has taken the role of film as a natural stimulus completely for granted. The present volume bridges the gap between critical theories of film on the one hand, and recent psychological theory and research of human emotion on the other, in an attempt to explain the emotions provoked by fiction film. This book integrates insights on the narrative structure of fiction film including its themes, plot structure, and characters with recent knowledge on the cognitive processing of natural events, and narrative and person information. It develops a theoretical framework for systematically describing emotion in the film viewer. The question whether or not film produces genuine emotion is answered by comparing affect in the viewer with emotion in the real world experienced by persons witnessing events that have personal significance to them. Current understanding of the psychology of emotions provides the basis for identifying critical features of the fiction film that trigger the general emotion system. Individual emotions are classified according to their position in the affect structure of a film -- a larger system of emotions produced by one particular film as a whole. Along the way, a series of problematic issues is dealt with, notably the reality of the emotional stimulus in film, the identification of the viewer with protagonists on screen, and the necessity of the viewer's cooperation in arriving at a genuine emotion. Finally, it is argued that film-produced emotions are genuine emotions in response to an artificial stimulus. Film can be regarded as a fine-tuned machine for a continuous stream of emotions that are entertaining after all. The work paves the way for understanding and, in principle, predicting emotions in the film viewer using existing psychological instruments of investigation. Dealing with the problems of film-induced affect and rendering them accessible to formal modeling and experimental method serves a wider interest of understanding aesthetic emotion -- the feelings that man-made products, and especially works of art, can evoke in the beholder.

The modern world is forcing us to understand emotion in order to cope with new problems such as road rage and epidemic levels of depression, as well as age-old problems such as homicide, genocide and racial tension. At the same time, scholarly research is leading us to appreciate how emotion helps us to understand and transcend our selfish interests, to connect with others, to feel what is just and moral, and not just think it, and to construct societies and cultures that govern our joint efforts. This book draws upon scholarly research to address, explain and legitimize the role that emotion plays in everyday interaction and in many of the pressing social, moral, and cultural issues that we face today.