The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion

The Affect Lab 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. It challenges the large body of humanities research surrounding affect theory and 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.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 29 September 2023
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Since the late 19th century, psychologists have employed various technological mediums to measure and analyze emotion. In his book, The Affect Lab, Grant Bollmer delves into the use of measurement tools such as electrical shocks, photography, video, and the electroencephalograph to argue that research on emotions has often confused the physiology of emotion with the tools that define its inscription.

Bollmer demonstrates that the psychological definitions of emotion have long been influenced by the physical characteristics of the devices used in laboratory research. To explore 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" conducted 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 extensive 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.

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Weight: 482g
Dimension: 216 x 140 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517915452