This volume deals with the challenge of measuring the emotional atmospheres, climates and cultures that affect humans at different periods of time. Individual articles deal with the emotional climate in different prisons, communities, regions, and nations. Some examine how emotional climates affect our individual and collective behavior, and how climate is affected by terrorist attacks, genocide, and conditions of peace. Others relate emotional climate to the peacefulness of different cultures and the happiness of individuals.

Joseph de Rivera is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Peace Studies Program at Clark University. His publications include The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy, A Structural Theory of the Emotions, Field Theory as Human Science, and (with Ted Sarbin) Believed -in Imaginings.

Dario Paez is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of the Basque Country in Spain. He has published numerous works on the mental health, collective memory and social identity of refuges, migrants and those exposed to traumatic events.

1. Introduction: Emotional Climate, Human Security, and Cultures of Peace (Joseph de Rivera and Dario Paez).2. The Emotional Climate of Nations and Their Culture of Peace (Joseph de Rivera, Rachael Kurrien, and Nina Olsen)3. The Impact of the Madrid Bombing on Personal Emotions, Emotional Atmosphere and Emotional Climate (Susan Conejero and Itziar Etxebarria).4. Emotional Climate in Organizations: Applications in Latin American Prisons (Jose Ignacio Ruiz).5. The Social Sharing of Emotion as an Interface Between Individual and Collective Processes in the Construction of Emotional Climates (Bernard Rime).6. Social Sharing, Participation in Demonstrations, Emotional Climate, and Coping with Collective Violence after the March 11th Madrid Bombings (Dario Paez, Nekane Basabe, Silvia Ubillos, and Jose Luis Gonzalez-Castro).7. Emotional Climate as Emotion Accessibility: How Countries Prime Emotions (Jose-Miguel Fernandez-Dols, Pilar Carrera, Alejandra Hurtado de Mendoza, and Luis Oceja).8. Human Security in Communities in Costa Rica and the United States (Caitlin O. Mahoney and Tatiana M. Pinedo)9. Political Violence, Impunity, and Emotional Climate in Maya Communities (M. Brinton Lykes, Carlos Martin Beristain, and Maria Luisa Cabrera Perez-Arminan).10. Collective Rituals, Emotional Climate and Intergroup Perception: Participation in "Gacaca" Tribunals and Assimilation of the Rwandan Genocide (Patrick Kanyangara, Bernard Rime, Pierre Philippot, and Vincent Yzerbyt).11. Culture of Peace: Sociostructural Dimensions, Cultural Values, and Emotional Climate (Nekane Basabe and Jose Valencia).12. Subjective Well-Being and Peace (Ed Diener and William Tov).13. Collective Emotions in Conflict Situations: Societal Implications (Daniel Bar-Tal, Eran Halperin, and Joseph de Rivera)