We have a special PPIG seminar on 27 May.
Prof Kristen Lindquist (UNC), director of the Carolina Affective Science Lab, will be giving a paper, The Psychological Construction of Emotions.
Abstract
Emotions form the fabric of memories, social interactions, and culture. They affect our health, our ability to make decisions, and can make our break relationships with others. Amidst great agreement about the importance of emotions, there is disagreement about how emotions are created in our brains and bodies. I weigh in on this question by presenting evidence that emotions are mental states that emerge from the combination of more basic psychological parts that are not specific to emotion. I present behavioral, psychophysiological, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging evidence demonstrating that emotion experiences and perceptions emerge in consciousness when people use concept knowledge about emotions to make meaning of body states in a given instance. Together, these findings suggest that what a person knows shapes what he or she feels. More broadly, these findings suggest that scientists should consider emotions as products of more general psychological causes rather than discrete packages of behaviors, feelings, and physiology.
We will meet 27 May in Room S37, 7 George Square, 11:00 - 12:30. (Please note the unusual time and location for the PPIG!)