Dr. Wil Cunningham (arriving July 2012)

RESEARCH

Our research takes a cognitive science approach to understand the cognitive and motivational processes underlying emotional responses. Of primary interest are the affective evaluations of people and objects that guide thought and behavior. To better understand these processes, our lab uses methods and theories from both social psychology (e.g., models of attitudes and latency-based evaluation measures) and cognitive science (e.g., biological models of emotion, fMRI/EEG methods, computational modeling). By using the "toolboxes" of each discipline with their distinct strengths and weaknesses, a more complete picture of emotion is likely to emerge. Current research examines how motivation and emotion-regulation (which can occur at both automatic and controlled levels of processing) contribute to emotional and evaluative states. This work suggests that affective states are constructed moment to moment from multiple component processes that integrate relevant information from various sources such as automatically activated attitudes and situational contexts. This work is applied to the study of prejudice (and prejudice reduction), decision-making, political attitudes, morality, and affective development (emotional regulation in children). More recently, we have studied how individual's differ in these core processes, and how these differences colour one's emotions, perceptions, and well-being.