The Emotions Industry

This book deals with the multi-cultural phenomenon of the emotions industry, as well as the cynical manner in which that industry exploits its consumers in various cultures. The book was written in order to illuminate the fact that the culture industry has developed a "new" configuration dominated by the production and distribution of emotions the emotions industry. The emotions industry is an industry that provides an incentive to exaggerate emotions in order to accumulate social, cultural or economic wealth. It endeavors to create emotional needs by connecting between the realization of these needs and consumer culture; by blurring the boundaries between authentic and simulated emotions, between real and imagined authenticity; by encouraging the externalization of inner worlds for financial gain, generating income or any other result; by revealing emotional worlds that gradually become merchandise, an effective and productive means of promoting economic, political, social or cultural processes. Obviously this is only possible on the condition that we are capable of controlling emotional processes, responding or delaying reactions, opening up and including or closing up and excluding our surroundings. This ability to regulate emotions lies at the foundation of the emotions industry, which shapes the interaction between emotion, cognition and behavior, commercial-economic and private interests, social-cultural and spiritual needs. Thus emotional regulation is transformed into a production line of emotional expectations and reactions, which specializes in creating emotional products and marketing them to the public in the framework of mass consumer culture.