Affect, Conditioning, and Cognition : Essays on the Determinants of Behavior

Originally published in 1985, this title was a retrospective appreciation of the late Richard L. Solomon. His pre- and postdoctoral students from past years presented the 22 papers which are published in this volume. The book reflects the breadth of Solomon’s impact through his teaching and research.

The first part contains a chapter that provides a bit of history in a retrospective appreciation of the several foci of Solomon’s research career. This chapter sets the stage for those that follow and reduces their diversity by providing a degree of historical understanding. The second part on the role of properties of fear contains chapters that address various issues associated with the role of conditioned fear. The third part contains papers that address cognitive, information-processing issues in the context of Pavlovian conditioning of appetitive and aversive events, reasoning and timing. The fourth part continues the exploration of the phenomenon of learned helplessness first discovered in Solomon’s laboratory. The fifth part addresses various issues associated with the Solomon and Corbit opponent-process theory of motivation and affect. The final part, on applications to human and cultural issues, contains chapters on such diverse subjects as cross-cultural analyses of aggressive behavior in children, the analysis of resistance to change in industrial organizations, the concept of liberty in formulating research issues in developmental psychology, and the status of free will in modern American psychology.

J. Bruce Overmier, F. Robert Brush