Changing Emotions

The question ‘how far can emotions be changed?’ lies at the heart of innumerable psychological interventions. Although often viewed as static, changes in the intensity, quality, and complexity of emotion can occur from moment to moment, and also over longer periods of time, often as a result of developmental, social or cultural factors.

Changing Emotions highlights several recent developments in this intriguing domain, and provides a comprehensive guide for understanding how and why emotions change. The chapters are organized into five parts:

• Lifespan Perspective
• Learning Perspective
• Social-Cultural Perspective
• Emotional-Dynamics Perspective
• Intervention Perspective.

In each chapter an internationally renowned scholar presents a concise review of key findings from their own research perspective. The book will be of great interest to researchers in the area of emotion and emotion regulation as well as related fields such as developmental psychology, educational psychology, social, clinical psychology and psychotherapy. It may also be of interest to sociologists, philosophers, and economists interested in learning more about emotions.

Dirk Hermans is Professor and the Director of the Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology at University of Leuven, Belgium. His work focuses on associative learning and fear, autobiographical memory, and the study of the automatic affective processing of stimuli.

Bernard Rimé is Emeritus and Invited Professor at the University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium and is a Past President of the International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE) and of the Belgian Psychological Society. His research examines how emotional episodes stimulate interpersonal and collective communication as well as the consequences of sharing emotions with others.

Batja Mesquita is a Professor and the Director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Her work focuses on the cultural and social constituents of emotion and emotion regulation. She is currently a Senior Editor for Psychological Science.