Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior

by Jon Elster

Overview

Emotion and addiction lie on a continuum between simple visceral drives such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire at one end and calm, rational decision making at the other. Although emotion and addiction involve visceral motivation, they are also closely linked to cognition and culture. They thus provide the ideal vehicle for Jon Elster's study of the interrelation between three explanatory approaches to behavior: neurobiology, culture, and choice.

The book is organized around parallel analyses of emotion and addiction in order to bring out similarities as well as differences. Elster's study sheds fresh light on the generation of human behavior, ultimately revealing how cognition, choice, and rationality are undermined by the physical processes that underlie strong emotions and cravings. This book will be of particular interest to those studying the variety of human motivations who are dissatisfied with the prevailing reductionisms.

*Not for sale in Belgium, France, or Switzerland.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262550369
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	07/24/2000
Series:	Jean Nicod Lectures , #1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	266
Sales rank:	988,183
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elster, John (Columbia Univ)

What People are Saying About This

Times Literary Supplement - Simon Blackburn

Useful and consistently sensible and interesting.

From the Publisher

"Useful and consistently sensible and interesting." Simon Blackburn, Times LiterarySupplement

Nico H. frijda

"Dr. Elster's new book was a great pleasure to read. As usual, he combines subtlety with profundity in approaching perennial problems, in this case those of the relationships between emotion, addiction, and choice. The book truly illuminates the issues, thanks to Elster's amazing erudition in the several domains."