Michael Lewis 
The Rise of Consciousness and the Development of Emotional Life 

Synthesizing decades of influential research and theory, Michael Lewis demonstrates the centrality of consciousness for emotional development. At first, infants’ competencies constitute innate reactions to particular physical events in the child’s world. These ‘action patterns’ are not learned, but are readily influenced by temperament and social interactions. With the rise of consciousness, these early competencies become reflected feelings, giving rise to the self-conscious emotions of empathy, envy, and embarrassment, and, later, shame, guilt, and pride. Focusing on typically developing children, Lewis also explores problems of atypical emotional development.



Winner/m-/William James Book Award, Society for General Psychology (APA Division 1)

Table of Content

1. Studying Emotional Development

2. Deconstructing Emotions: Elicitors, Action Patterns, and Experiences

3. Multiple Emotions and Moods

4. The Early Emotions

5. The Rise of Consciousness

6. The Transforming Role of Consciousness: Self-Conscious Emotions, Social Relationships, and Mentalism

7. Lying and Deception in Emotional Life

8. The Self-Conscious Emotions

9. Temperament, Emotion, and Stress

10. The Socialization of Emotion

11. Emotional Development Gone Awry

12. The Fugue

About the author

Michael Lewis, Ph D, is University Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and Director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is also Professor of Psychology, Education, Nursing, and Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Cognitive Science Center. Dr. Lewis is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and is currently in the top 1.5% of scientists referenced in the Social Science Index. He is a recipient of the Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society from the APA, the Hedi Levenback Pioneer Award from the New York Zero-to-Three Network, and the Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. Dr. Lewis has published over 450 journal articles and book chapters and 35 books, including Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self, Children’s Emotions and Moods, Shame: The Exposed Self, and Altering Fate.