Psychology Faculty

James Russell

Professor

James Russell

Ph.D.

Contact

McGuinn Hall 525

Telephone: 617-552-4546

Email: james.russell@bc.edu

ORCID

Education

  • Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles

Courses

PSYC2242 Personality Theories

PSYC5542 Theories of Human Emotion

PSYC6690 Scientific Writing

Research Interests

Emotion. The expression and recognition of emotion through faces. Children's understanding of emotion and the development of emotional experience.Cultural influences on emotion. The distinction between mood and emotion and scientific taxonomies of each.

Curriculum Vitae

Department

Psychology

Profile

Prof. Russell's research centers on human emotion. His interest began with the question of how large-scale environments (such as homes, offices, malls) and social events (chatting with a friend, working with a team) influence emotion and thereby influence various activities and outcomes. This led to the fundamental question of how emotions can be described and then assessed. Some specific ideas pursued are a circumplex model of emotion, a prototype theory of emotion concepts, which leads to the idea that specific emotions are understood in terms of scripts, a defence of the traditional view that displeasure is the opposite of pleasure, a skeptical review of the traditional view that basic emotions are universally and easily recognized from facial expressions. More recently, the question has arisen of how these various ideas fit together within a larger framework. An analysis is being developed called "the psychological construction of emotion."

Representative Publications

Russell, J. A. (2012). From a psychological constructionist perspective. In P. Zachar & R. Ellis (Eds.),聽Categorical versus dimensional models of affect: A seminar on the theories of Panksepp and Russell. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Russell, J. A. (2003). Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion.聽Psychological Review, 110, 145-172.

Russell, J. A., & Lemay, G. (2000). Concepts of emotion. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (Eds.)聽Handbook of Emotions, 2nd edition. New York: Guilford.

Russell, J.A., & Fernandez-Dols, J.M. (Eds.) (1997).聽The psychology of facial expression. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Russell, J. A. (1994). Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the cross-cultural studies.聽Psychological Bulletin, 115, 102-141.

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