A natural history of human emotions

Synopsis

Using Charles Darwin's survey of emotions as a starting point, Stuart Walton examines the history of each of our core emotions - fear, anger, disgust, sadness, jealousy, contempt, shame, embarrassment, surprise and happiness - and how these emotions have influenced both cultural and social history. We learn that primitive fear served as the engine of religious belief, while a desire for happiness led to humankind's first musings on achieving a perfect Utopia. Challenging the notion that human emotion has remained constant, "A Natural History of Human Emotions" explains why in the last two hundred and fifty years, society has changed its unwritten rules for what can be expressed in public and in private. For example our private lives have benefited from greater emotional honesty, while some emotions, such as anger, now seem to dominate public discourse.