Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment

Emotion research has become a mature branch of psychology, with its own standardized measures, induction procedures, data-analysis challenges, and sub-disciplines. During the last decade, a number of books addressing major questions in the study of emotion have been published in response to a rapidly increasing demand that has been fuelled by an increasing number of psychologists whose research either focus on or involve the study of emotion. Very few of these books, however, have presented an explicit discussion of the tools for conducting research, despite the facts that the study of emotion frequently requires highly specialized procedures, instruments, and coding strategies, and that the field has reached a place where a large number of excellent elicitation procedures and assessment instruments have been developed and validated. The Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment corrects this oversight in the literature by organizing and detailing all the major approaches and instruments for the study of emotion. It is the most complete reference for methods and resources in the field, and will serve as a pragmatic resource for emotion researchers by providing easy access to a host of scales, stimuli, coding systems, assessment tools, and innovative methodologies. This handbook will help to advance research in emotion by encouraging researchers to take greater advantage of standard and well-researched approaches, which will increase both the productivity in the field and the speed and accuracy with which research can be communicated.

James A. Coan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. His research focuses on the neural systems supporting emotional communication and regulation, with an emphasis on the roles these systems play in psychopathology and interpersonal relationships. John J. B. Allen is Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. His research interests include the etiology and treatment of mood disorders.