The affect lab : the history and limits of measuring emotion

Examines how our understanding of emotion is shaped by the devices we use to measure it Since the late nineteenth century, psychologists have used technological forms of media to measure and analyze emotion. In The Affect Lab, Grant Bollmer examines the use of measurement tools such as electrical shocks, photography, video, and the electroencephalograph to argue that research on emotions has confused the physiology of emotion with the tools that define its inscription. Bollmer shows that the psychological definitions of emotion have long been directly shaped by the physical qualities of the devices used in laboratory research. To investigate these devices, The Affect Lab examines four technologies related to the history of psychology in North America: spiritualist toys at Harvard University, serial photography in early American psychological laboratories, experiments on “psychopaths” performed with an instrument called an Offner Dynograph, and the development of the “electropsychometer,” or “E-Meter,” by Volney Mathison and L. Ron Hubbard. Challenging the large body of humanities research surrounding affect theory, The Affect Lab identifies an understudied problem in formulations of affect: how affect is a construction inseparable from the techniques and devices used to identify and measure it. Ultimately, Bollmer offers a new critique of affect and affect theory, demonstrating how deferrals to psychology and neuroscience in contemporary theory and philosophy neglect the material of experimental, scientific research. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions. Cinema and Media Studies/Science and Technology Studies/Psychology Cover Page 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 8 Introduction: Techniques of the Affect Lab 10 Chapter 1. William James’s Planchette 50 Chapter 2. Books of Faces 82 Chapter 3. The Prison Dynograph 136 Chapter 4. E-Meter Metaphysics 174 Conclusion: The Epistemology and Aesthetics of Empathy 212 Acknowledgments 220 Notes 224 Bibliography 254 Index 276 About the Author 290 "The Affect Lab examines the use of measurement tools to argue that research on emotions has confused the physiology of emotion with the tools that define its inscription. Offering a new critique of affect and affect theory, Grant Bollmer demonstrates how deferrals to psychology and neuroscience in contemporary theory and philosophy neglect the material of experimental, scientific research"-- Provided by publisher