I am a social psychologist with training in social cognition, psychophysiology and neuroscience methods. I am broadly interested in the basis of human emotion--in answering what emotions are, how they are created by the brain, and how they shape social behavior.

My on-going lines of research are united by the hypothesis that emotions are constructed of more fundamental psychological ingredients that are general to all mental states. In this view, emotions arise from the combination of basic affective responses, concept knowledge, and attention. I am interested in how these more basic psychological ingredients interact during the experience and perception of emotions, and in what happens to emotion when there are alterations to either ingredient. My other research interests include questions about the embodied representation of emotion knowledge, how language shapes emotion perception and experience, individual and sex differences in emotional experience, how attention during emotion experience shapes behavior, and how, more generally, the ingredients that constitute emotions can be mapped to the brain.

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative, where I work with Dr. Brad Dickerson (Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital). I am interested in understanding the brain basis of changes in affective responding and concept knowledge following neurodegenerative disease, and how changes in these basic processes translate into impairments in emotion.

In the fall of 2012, I will join the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Please feel free to email me about positions in my lab.