ABSTRACT

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.

part 3|46 pages

Social-Cultural Perspective

part 5|49 pages

Intervention Perspective

chapter 25|4 pages

Can expressive writing change emotions?

An oblique answer to the wrong question

chapter 27|7 pages

Cognitive mechanisms involved in therapeutic change for depression

Reducing abstraction and increasing concreteness

chapter 28|7 pages

A functional approach to the study of human emotion

The centrality of relational processes

chapter 30|6 pages

Mindfulness-based interventions

The dialectic of changing emotions by accepting them

chapter |7 pages

Postscript

Experimental rigor and clinical complexity