Affective science (the study of emotions, moods, affect-based pathology and other emotion-related phenomena) has expanded dramatically in recent years. Its impact has been felt throughout psychology, biology, and psychiatry. With this growth has come the inevitable specialization along with its attendant benefits and costs. Among the benefits are increasingly mature theories and a veritable explosion of methodological advances and empirically-derived knowledge concerning aspects of affect ranging from molecular to molar levels. Among its costs is that it is no longer feasible to be trained to be an expert in all aspects of emotion research, which has led to an increasing isolation among areas of specialization. We propose to augment the specialized training predoctoral students receive in their chosen fields with broad exposure to other traditions within affective science. We hope to foster an appreciation and understanding of the theories, methods, and data of other areas of affective science, thus laying the groundwork for better communication among subspecialties, more interdisciplinary collaborations, and a more incremental affective science in which work in a given specialization also takes into account advances in other areas. In this application for five years of support, we propose to select four students per year from psychology and the health sciences programs at four Bay Area universities (the Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco campuses of the University of California and Stanford University) to participate in a three-year training sequence leading up to the conduct of the dissertation research. Training, will take place in a year long seminar at Berkeley, and at specialized workshops and in an annual workshop. Close mentoring and monitoring of trainee progress will be maintained throughout. Training students in affective science has significant social benefits because research on emotion and other affective phenomena has important applications to diverse problems including: (1) physical and mental health and disease; (b) the evaluation of treatment efficacy; (e) attachment, loyalty and commitment to others; (d) facilitation and impairment of problem-solving and thinking; (e) drug abuse and other forms of addiction; (f) marital discord, marital satisfaction and divorce; and (g) child abuse and other forms of violent behavior.
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