Synopsis "The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions"
The last 20 years have witnessed tremendous growth in theoretical and empirical work on emotions, including groundbreaking work on anger, disgust, pride, shame, sexual jealousy, romantic love, and more. Such work has demonstrated that emotions pervade nearly all aspects of psychological life, and that emotions are key to survival and reproduction and are therefore prime targets of natural selection. Emotions have also been implicated in a variety of psychological disorders, from the obvious (depression, anxiety) to the much less so (schizoid personality disorder, borderline personality disorder). In The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions, Laith Al-Shawaf and Todd K. Shackelford have gathered a group of leading scholars in the field to present a centralized resource for researchers and students wishing to understand emotions from an evolutionary perspective. Together, the chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the literature, with a special focus on 1) conceptual foundations of evolutionary approaches to the emotions, 2) specific emotions, such as love, jealousy, anger, pride, disgust, shame, and others, 3) the importance of emotions in daily life, and 4) emotion disorders. The volume consists of four parts; the first part covers conceptual foundations of evolutionary approaches to the emotions (Evolution and the Emotions: Conceptual Foundations). The second part consists of specific emotions (Evolutionary Approaches to Specific Emotions). The third part focuses on the role of emotions in daily life, including spheres such as friendship, romantic relationships, morality, and politics (Evolutionary Approaches to Emotions in Daily Life). The fourth and final part consists of chapters on distinct emotion disorders (Evolutionary Approaches to Emotion Disorders). Comprehensive and integrative in nature, this Handbook is as an essential resource for students and scholars from a diversity of fields wishing to build upon our theoretical and empirical understanding of the emotions.
