The Emotional Foundations of Personality

This book presents the wealth of scientific evidence that our personality emerges from evolved primary emotions shared by all mammals. Yes, your dog feels love—and many other things too. These subcortically generated emotions bias our actions, alter our perceptions, guide our learning, provide the basis for our thoughts and memories, and become regulated over the course of our lives.

Understanding personality development from the perspective of mammals is a groundbreaking approach and one that sheds new light on the ways in which we as humans respond to life events, both good and bad.

Jaak Panksepp, famous for discovering laughter in rats and for creating the field of affective neuroscience, died in April 2017. This book forms part of his lasting legacy and impact on a wide range of scientific and humanistic disciplines. It will be essential reading for anyone trying to understand how we act in the world and the world's impact on us.

“"This work by Davis and Panksepp extends but also recontextualizes Carrell's classical factor analytic work, which has long dominated the field of personality theory. This much-needed volume is not only a significant addition to The Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, it is simply a must-read for all personality theorists, while also offering critical insights to psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, and other mental health disciplines. Highly recommended!"”

"Jaak Panksepp left an important legacy of work on behaviour, mind, and brain." -- Antonio Damasio

Ken Davis completed his PhD under Jaak Panksepp at Bowling Green State University; they worked on an assessment and theory of personality for twenty years. Jaak Panksepp, PhD, was the Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, emeritus Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at Bowling Green State University, and the Head of Northwestern University's Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics. Mark Solms discovered the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming. He is director of neuropsychology of the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he lives. He is also honorary lecturer in neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School and honorary Fellow at the American College of Psychiatrists.

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