BOOK REVIEW

Jon Elster, Strong Feelings. Emotion, Addiction and Human Behaviour,The MIT Press, 1999, 252pp. (Also available as paperback, 2000,252pp.)

Elster is Professor of Social Science at Columbia University, andthe author or editor of almost 30 books. His research interests, andareas of competence, are wide-ranging. This is reflected in his profes-sional career, during which he has held University posts in Economics,History, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology. The current vol-ume results from the Jean Nicod Lectures (delivered annually in Parisby a leading philosopher of the mind or philosophically orientedcognitive science) given by Elster in 1997.

Elster has not chosen a restricted field of study. When whole tomescan be devoted to just one or a few of the emotions, a book purportingto deal with all of them, plus addiction, and their relation to, first,culture and social norms, and, second, the idea of choice might seemover-ambitious. As it turns out, this is not necessarily the case.

We are all familiar with the GUT (Grand Unified Theory ofeverything) style of social science book. It is usually 500 pages pluslong, and ideal for long-haul flights (although it does tend to wake youup when it slips off of your lap and lands on your foot). Elster’s book,coming as it does from a lecture series, escapes this trap. The mainbody of the work is contained in four chapters of almost equal length,around 45 pages each. The whole book weighs in succinctly at justover 200 pages. The main issues are stated clearly and simply, ratherthan (as is often the case in the murky waters of interdisciplinarity)being flogged until they, or the reader, drop. The book is well-written, and little gems of quotations have been liberally sprinkledabout.

The book’s main thesis is that addiction and emotion are to someextent homologous. Chapters 2 and 3 present, respectively, emotionsand addiction. The same format is used in both chapters:How can we obtain information about the phenomenon in question?What kinds of these phenomena there are? andWhat are these phenomena?This presentation, a walk around the phenomenological garden asDennett1 would say, is to be encouraged, as it leaves us in no doubt as

Journal of Happiness Studies 3: 393–398, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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to what we will be talking about in the second half of the book. Elstercannot escape the necessity of making lists (of what emotions there are,and then of why these are emotions, as opposed to visceral responsesor something else), but this is understandable. Emotions can be social(coming from the evaluation of one’s own or of someone else’s char-acter or behaviour – shame, anger, admiration etc.), result from some-one else’s possession of a good or bad (envy, sympathy, gloating etc.),from one’s own possession of such a good (joy, grief), from uncertainty(hope, fear, love, jealousy), or be purely aesthetic (wonder, awe).

Ten properties of emotions are then described, which Elster is quickto note are neither necessary nor exhaustive. These include unbiddenoccurrence (we cannot make ourselves have emotions, nor are we effec-tively able to prevent them), brief duration, and inducing specific actiontendencies. It is obviously this latter which gives the book its subtitleof “behavior” with respect to the emotions.

The broad-brush picture leads inevitably to doubts. Two of mine con-cern love withering away when it is certain to be reciprocated (p. 23),which depressed me rather (I hope that it is not true), and sympa-thy being defined as “a positive emotion caused by the deserved goodof someone else” (p. 22), which brings into question exactly whatbereavement cards expressing “with deepest sympathy” signal to theirrecipients.

Addiction, typified by euphoria, withdrawal, craving and tolerance,is presented in Chapter 3. We are in the world of eating an appetite-inducing cake here, where (if rational and not myopic) individuals knowthat today’s consumption depends on what was eaten yesterday, butalso that today’s consumption will alter the pleasure from tomorrow’sconsumption.

So far, so relatively uncontroversial. The real meat of the book comesin Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 relates both emotion and addiction tosocial norms. Such norms are defined as being shared (everyone hasthem, and everyone knows that everyone has them), with sanctionsfor violation, and as being sustained by contempt and shame (i.e., byemotions). A wide variety of norms can be sustained by the same mech-anism. Emotions therefore directly support social norms, in that withoutthe extra cost of shame they would be less likely to endure. The normsthemselves may refer to emotions. Figure 4.1 presents the case of asocial norm against envy. A co-worker’s good fortune initially incites

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envy. In light of the norm against this emotion, a cognitive process goesto work which translates the co-worker’s good fortune into somethingthat must have been obtained by underhand means, transforming theemotion to (socially accepted) indignation.

With respect to addiction, social norms are argued to explain “a greatdeal of the variation in drug use across societies”. The evidence here islargely anecdotal and, although I do not doubt that norms are important,this seems a rather swingeing statement. As norms are supported byemotions, there is a link between addiction and emotion here. Normsmay be for abstinence or excess, so we cannot a priori determine thesign of any relationship between emotional and addictive societies.Elster notes, however, that norms can have counter-productive effects,as individuals rebel against them: “deliberate attempts to induce shamein others often induce anger and protest behaviour rather than shameand avoidance behavior” (p. 125). Interestingly, this is the exact oppo-site of the effect of shame (as an emotion) sustaining social normshighlighted in the first part of the chapter. Overall, however, thereis plenty of food for thought here, despite the lack of firm empiricalevidence.

Chapter 5 relates emotion and addiction to choice. This chapter, forme, is less successful. A key issue here is whether choice and actions arereward-sensitive or not. If not, then there is a danger that, by choosingaction A no matter what, we will not be maximising our utility orwell-being. The point is raised that emotions such as fear, anger orshame may make some actions reward-insensitive, and that, in general,an inverse relation between passion and reason is expected (p. 158).Unhappily, as emotions are unbidden, there is not a lot that can be doneabout this loss of reason. A counter-argument is that emotions mayimprove rationality: a “gut-feeling” may act as a heuristic marker whenmaking complex calculations would be too time-consuming. Elster isfairly lukewarm about this functionalist interpretation of the emotions.Given the book’s thesis, we can see why. If emotions are functional, andaddictions are homologous to emotions, then what is the functionalityof, say, smoking?

The second part of the chapter deals with addiction and choice: canaddiction undermine the ability to make rational choices? Althoughthe conclusion presented is largely, yes, it does, I found the analysisto be somewhat ambivalent. It is true that an addict does not make

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choices that the non-addict would make, given the same setting, prices,income etc. But this is the whole crux of addiction: the addict has theadditional baggage of both his past and anticipated future consumptionto deal with, which leads to choices that differ from those of the non-addict. This does not show irrationality. In addition, the key question ofwhether addiction is rational or not is not cleared up. “Addiction resultsfrom voluntary choices” (p. 190), “any . . . disregard for the future isa sign of irrationality” (p. 147), and “a given rate of time discountingcannot in itself be seen as rational or irrational” (p. 179). In fact, thediscount rate does not play such a key role, at least in the economicanalysis of addiction a la Becker and Murphy,2 in that addiction caneasily result with a discount rate of zero.

Last, much is made of hyperbolic discounting (under which indi-viduals say that they will give up at a future time, but at that futuretime always find it better to carry on). I would have liked to seesome more evidence here that individuals do indeed discount inthis way.

Elster is largely anti-functionalist, which leads to both emotions andsocial norms being simply described, rather than explained. While Iaccept this for emotions, I have a harder time with respect to socialnorms, which, as the author himself notes, change dramatically overtime within a culture. To say that norms explain cross-cultural differ-ence in drug use is, in a way, just to rephrase the question. Why donorms differ so across countries? Are some norms better than others?If norms can change, how should we try to change them?

In Chapter 2, information about emotions is argued only to comefrom philosophy or literature. Experimental studies cannot producethe required emotions for ethical and practical reasons, and animalstudies do not reveal anything about complex emotions. This is onearea where niggling doubts begin to occur. Stendahl’s Le Rouge et LeNoir is cited liberally (far more often than the index suggests), butthere is no mention of the work in experimental economics which testsfairness and rationality (see the work of Guth and Fehr, for example).This is no reflection on Stendahl, but how are we going to be able tosay whether these intriguing ideas have any behavioural counterpart? Acase in point is Figure 4.1, in which envy turns into indignation. In thiscontext we would like to know how an indignant person’s behaviourdiffers from that of an envious person, yet Elster is strangely silent onthis question.

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The author’s reluctance, which is probably right in itself, to clas-sify addiction as essentially rational or irrational, leads to ambiva-lence about what should be done. Some evidence suggests thatthe demand for drugs is price-responsive. One strategy is then totax legal drugs in order to reduce demand and, hopefully, addic-tion. Yet if addiction is rational, this may not be in society’s bestinterest. If addiction is irrational, then we are “saving people fromthemselves”.

The premise of the book, that addictions and emotion are homol-ogous, is not really proven. The often-remarked similarity in theneurological effects of love and amphetamines gives one pause forthought, but does not seem to be generalisable. There would seem tobe an insuperable difference in time scales: emotions are short-lived,and we cannot usefully talk about a short-run addiction. One way outwould be to consider addiction to emotion. This is mentioned in theIntroduction but not pursued further. If the book’s premise is right,some interesting questions can be asked. If emotion and addiction takethe same neural pathways, does one trade off against the other? Does anindividual become addicted to alcohol or heroin because they cannotget the same dopamine rush from their emotions? Alternatively, arethe two complements: is someone with an emotional disposition alsolikely to become an addict?

Further, emotion and addiction may interact in ways that this bookdoes not consider. Elster presents a number of ways in which addic-tion can develop: through ignorance, through a calculated gamble, orthrough a simple choice (under certainty). From the discussion of theemotions, we might expect that an ignorant addict would be angry(at themselves), while an addict of the second type would be dis-appointed at being unlucky. The third type of addict would not feelthese emotions. It is likely that addicts who are angry/disappointed/neutral act differently from each other. Again, this topic is nottreated.

No-one denies the existence of emotions or of addictive behaviours.In this book, Elster has put his finger on a couple of big questions ofinterest to all social scientists. The chapters on the interactions withculture and norms, and with rational choice are of interest. In myview, the book is less successful in establishing a homology betweenaddiction and emotion, and is tentative with respect to behaviouralpredictions and addiction policy. At the very least, however, Elster

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asks good questions. The field is open, and promises to be a rich andrewarding one.

Andrew ClarkDELTAFrance

NOTES

1 Daniel Dennett: 1991, Consciousness Explained (Little Brown and Co).2 Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy: 1988, ‘A Theory of Rational Addiction’, Journalof Political Economy 96, pp. 675–700.