The developing brain as historical artifact.

Abstract

This commentary critically assesses the importance and limitations of bioconstructionist research on emotional development within the discipline of psychology, broadly conceived, finding that it depends upon theories and methodologies concerning the study of culture that the humanities can provide. The established field of the history of emotions is introduced as a means of complicating bioconstruction by highlighting the contingency of the world in which emotional development takes place. Once the developing brain-body is understood to be historically specific, new questions emerge, old debates (especially about universality) are settled, and the pathway towards interdisciplinary collaboration on the question of experience opens up.

Progress in understanding the emergence of human emotion.

“…In addition, the cultural history of emotion is often ignored in theories of emotion, with most psychological and neuroscientific models treating current emotion categories as if they are basic, stable, everlasting "things" in the real world. As pointed out by Boddice (2019), historical perspectives provide a broader view of the range of phenomena that need to be explained and accounted for in a developmental model. We believe that there are some thorny questions and issues that merit additional attention in cross-cultural studies of children's emotions.…”

“…For example, D’Arms and Samuels (2019) raise questions about the relations between cognitions about emotions and emotional experiences. And Boddice (2019) reminds us that cultural, social, economic, and political factors throughout history change how people think about, experience, and express emotions, as well as what is even considered to be an emotion. Finally, Frankenhuis (2019) makes the point that many of these theories can be empirically tested and evaluated with formal mathematical models, an approach that has rarely been employed in the field of emotional development, but one that holds great promise.…”

History Looks Forward: Interdisciplinarity and Critical Emotion Research

“…Rather, these essays are designed to demonstrate the indispensable quality of historical work for emotion researchers in other disciplines, as well as intending to inspire other historians to aim for similarly critical engagement across disciplinary lines. Such work has become imperative (see Boddice, 2019b). For many years, research on emotions in different disciplines has taken place upon parallel or even divergent courses, with agreement on the object of study often seeming untenable across disciplinary lines.…”

From the ashes, a fertile opportunity for historicism – Review Symposium on Leys’s The Ascent of Affect

“…At the summer programme of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences in Geneva in 2018, I found an audience of developmental psychologists who were prepared to listen to the biocultural possibilities that emotional historicism implies. Meetings such as this have led to the inclusion of historical perspectives and direct challenges to the prevailing paradigm within psychological publications (for example, Boddice, 2019). This, it strikes me, is perhaps the best way that historians' knowledge claims about emotions can become visible to psychologists.…”