Ideas and Realities of Emotion (Paperback)

Emotion is something we all talk about in everyday conversations, and studies make an implicit assumption that emotions are "out there" or "in there", somewhere in psychological reality waiting to be isolated and dissected. Brian Parkinson looks at emotion in encounters between people, expressed in gesture and movement, talk and silence. He presents a clear and concise overview of research into emotion focusing on cognitive appraisal, bodily changes, action tendencies and expressive displays. This text challenges the idea of emotion as an individual intrapsychic phenomenon, and formulates a conceptual framework based on the idea of emotion as interpersonal communication, a social practice influenced by culture and language. The book should prove valuable to all those approaching emotion from a social psychological perspective, whether at advanced undergraduate or graduate level.