Episode Details

For centuries, people have debated, measured, regulated and theorized about emotion. But no single work has attempted to define the full landscape of everyday emotional states across disciplines — until now. Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart by D. Earl Johnston presents the first fully cross-disciplinary reference defining 272 emotional states drawn from 3,000 years of recorded thought in the fields of philosophy, science, linguistics, psychology, art and spiritual traditions. “Not since Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence has there been such a needed shift in public discourse around emotions. Choosing Emotions seeks to do this, focusing first and foremost on how we define and categorize them,” says Johnston. “The result is akin to a Barlett’s Thesaurus solely on the topic of emotions, and it is every bit as entertaining.”Going far beyond primal feelings of fear, anger, joy and sorrow, Choosing Emotions seeks to address what Johnston describes as a foundational gap in emotional literacy, or the ability to understand, express and regulate emotions. According to the book’s research notes, roughly 25% of the 272 emotional states included in the book are not found in major psychology dictionaries, including commonly used terms such as admiration, confidence, procrastination and zeal. The work expands the discussion beyond psychology, incorporating definitional perspectives from seven fields and more than 30 faith and philosophical traditions.

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