The Nature of the Beast, David J. Anderson
The Nature of the Beast, David J. Anderson
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The Nature of the Beast

Author: David J. Anderson

Narrator: L.J. Ganser

Unabridged: 9 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 03/15/2022


Synopsis

Does your dog get sad when you leave for the day? Does your cat purr because she loves you? Do bears attack when they’re angry? You can’t very well ask them.

In fact, scientists haven’t been able to reach a consensus on whether animals even have emotions like humans do, let alone how to study them. Yet studies of animal emotion are critical for understanding human emotion and mental illness.

In The Nature of the Beast, pioneering neuroscientist David J. Anderson describes a new approach to solving this problem. He and his colleagues have figured out how to study the brain activity of animals as they navigate real-life scenarios, like
fleeing a predator or competing for a mate. His research has revolutionized what we know about animal fear and aggression. Here, he explains what studying emotions and related internal brain states in animals can teach us about human
behavior, offering new insights into why isolation makes us more aggressive, how sex and violence connect, and whether there’s a link between aggression and mental illness.

Full of fascinating stories, The Nature of the Beast reconceptualizes how the brain regulates emotions—and explains why we have them at all.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jenny B on March 09, 2022

Emotions in general are very hard to map and research, even in humans where we can ask individuals how they are feeling while running brain scans. In animals where we can't even scientifically confirm if they are capable of experiencing emotions, it's almost impossible. Almost. David Andersen shows......more

Goodreads review by Reddle on May 26, 2023

It just isn't for me: The first two chapters explored the interesting concept of states in comparison to autonomic behaviours: behaviours manifest from an internal motivation state like fear or aggression. Behaviours are separate from instinct: for example, we can be in an internal state of aggressi......more

Goodreads review by Nick on February 13, 2024

If anything, this book excels at demonstrating just how difficult it is to study emotions in an objectifiable and quantifiable manner. I have such a strong appreciation and admiration for the researchers that take up this seemingly impossible conquest. However, much like some other reviews mention,......more

Goodreads review by Ben on September 13, 2023

3.5 stars - like other reviewers have said, the book should've been subtitled differently, maybe something like "The Science of Emotional States." What Anderson is attempting to do here is to encourage the scientific community to view emotions not as subjective "feelings" but as objective, measurabl......more

Goodreads review by David on February 03, 2023

I dislike it when books don't deliver on their clickbait bylines. This book does not unveil "how emotions guide us". Firstly, emotions are redefined as internal brain states which other scientists would probably refer to as affect. In fact, a large part of the author's study is on what he calls "emoti......more