Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Ph.D., is an Assistant Project Scientist at the University of California, Davis and the California National Primate Research Center. Eliza is interested in why any two people sampled on a random street corner, or two monkeys on a street corner in New Delhi, or two dolphins swimming off a beach, are likely to have radically different emotional lives. Using tools from neuroscience, physiology, anthropology, and psychology, she focuses on understanding the biological mechanisms that create normal and abnormal emotion. Her team uses a multi-species approach to understand the evolution of emotion and well-being.
Daryl Cameron, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Iowa. He is the director of the Iowa Morality Laboratory, which focuses on topics including: examining causes and consequences of compassion avoidance; using constructionist models of emotion to explain moral judgment and moral behavior; and using process dissociation to quantify automatic and controlled moral judgments in student and clinical populations. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.
Katie Chun, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis and the California National Primate Research Center. Katie is interested in the underlying physiological mechanisms of how personality may affect health outcomes. In particular, she is interested in the way stress response systems regulate the immune system.
Steve Chang, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and of Neurobiology at Yale University. His lab investigates neural mechanisms underlying complex social behaviors in non-human primates using electrophysiological and neuroendocrinological approaches while animals are actively engaged in social interactions.
Mina Cikara, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Her lab uses a wide range of tools — standard laboratory experiments, implicit and explicit behavioral measures, fMRI and psychophysiology — to examine how the mind, brain, and behavior change when social relations shift from “me vs. you” to “us vs. them.
Tamlin Conner, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She is the director of the Daily Experiences Laboratory which uses mobile technology to understand the psychological, nutritional, and health predictors of daily well-being.
Maria Gendron, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral research in the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab at Northeastern University. Maria’s research uses a multi-method approach (including behavioral laboratory methods and cultural comparisons) to understand the contribution of language (and the conceptual knowledge it grounds) to the perception and experience of emotion.
Tom Hollenstein, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He is the director of the Adolescent Dynamics Laboratory which specializes in understanding the physiological, expressive, and appraisal processes underlying emotions and their regulation in children, adolescents, and adults.
Kristen Lindquist, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina. Kristen’s Carolina Affective Science Laboratory (CASL) at UNC uses social cognitive, psychophysiological, and neuroscience methods to understand the nature of human emotion. She is interested in how someone’s knowledge about emotions shapes his or her experiences and perceptions of emotions. The CASL also explores questions about how body states shape emotional experiences, how emotions are created by neural networks, and how individuals differ in emotional experiences.
Zan Isgett, M.A., is a Ph.D. candidate in the social psychology program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a member of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab, her research interests lie at the intersection of biology and social psychology. Specifically, she studies how certain biological mechanisms (e.g. parasympathetic activity, oxytocin) underpin our capacity to experience positive emotions in social contexts. Aside from research, she enjoys writing about science for general audiences in order to communicate scientific ideas in more accessible ways.
Jasmine Mote is a Ph.D. Candidate in the clinical science program at the University of California, Berkeley. Working in the Emotion and Social Interaction Lab, she conducts both basic research (e.g., understanding the relationship between social interactions and motivated behavior) and treatment intervention work (e.g., interventions focused on increasing positive emotion in people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia). In her free time she is devoted to speaking and writing about research and mental illness to general audiences, with the hope of contributing to the reduction of misinformation and stigma surrounding mental illness.
Ajay Satpute, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Pomona College. Ajay is a psychologist and neuroscientist studying how higher cognitive abilities, like language, conceptual categorization, and narrative schemas are important for how people perceive and make judgments about themselves and others. His research draws on behavioral and neuroscience methods to develop a functional architecture for how people categorize their social experiences. A long-term goal is to understand this architecture to the degree that it enables predictions for the kinds of categories people use.
Alex Shackman, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and director of the Affective and Translational Neuroscience Lab. His lab investigates the neural basis of fear and anxiety in order to better understand neuropsychiatric disorders. To do so, lab members use a range of methods including brain imaging (e.g., fMRI), event-related potential (ERP) techniques, peripheral physiological measures, and behavioral assays, such as experience sampling. The lab is also interested in individual differences in personality and temperament and cognition and emotion interactions.
Leah Somerville, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Harvard University and director of the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab. Her research uses behavioral and brain-based approaches to understand how brain development during adolescence influences changes to emotions, motivation, and social behavior that are characteristic of this age.
Lisa A Williams, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales. She is a social psychologist whose research interests include the dynamics between emotional experience and social interaction. Specifically, her research considers the social functions of positive emotions that arise in the context of social interactions – namely pride, gratitude, and compassion. Her work spans intrapersonal (within person), interpersonal (between individuals), and intergroup (between groups) processes. Her research is funded by the Australian Research Council as well as the Australian Red Cross Blood Service.
Piercarlo Valdesolo, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of the Moral Emotions and Trust lab at Claremont McKenna College. He teaches courses in social and moral psychology and his research explores the emotions underlying trust, cooperation and moral judgment.
Jolie Wormwood, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral researcher in the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab at Northeastern University. Jolie is a social psychologist who utilizes techniques from vision science and psychophysiology to examine how people make decisions about potential threats or risks and, in particular, how affect or emotion may inform decision making in such contexts.
Sherri Widen, Ph.D., is a Social Science Researcher at Stanford’s Center for Educational Policy Analysis (CEPA) Labs. She is interested in how emotion knowledge varies with age, language, parenting practices, and culture.