ECSN Lab

My research explores the interplay between emotion, cognition, embodiment and consciousness.  I am particularly interested in the implications of this work for social cognition.  In my work, I draw on a variety of methods of social and cognitive psychology, including approaches and methods of social neuroscience.

Affect, motivation, and awareness.

Researchers typically make two assumptions about affective reactions.  First, affective reactions are intrinsically conscious (i.e., subjectively “felt”).  Second, affective reactions influence behavior regardless of motivation. Our studies question both assumptions.  First, we show that behavior can be influenced when a person is unaware of any affective reaction at all (in addition to being unaware of the causal stimulus).  This suggests the possibility of a genuinely unconscious or “unfelt” emotion.  Second, we show that “unconscious” affective reactions primarily influence behaviors that are motivationally relevant.  For empirical papers, see: Winkielman, Zajonc, & Schwarz, 1997; Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005.  For reviews, see Berridge & Winkielman, 2003; and Winkielman & Berridge, 2004.  For a comprehensive treatment of the relation between emotion and consciousness, see the book Emotion and Consciousness (eds. Feldman-Barrett, Niedenthal, & Winkielman, 2005). For my general views on consciousness, see Winkielman & Schooler, 2008.  Recently, my colleague and I began to investigate the role of affect and motivation in decisions, including the neural basis of this influence (Winkielman, Knutson, Paulus, & Trujillo, 2007; Knutson, Wimmer, Kuhnen, & Winkielman, 2008).

Processing dynamics

Information processing can be characterized not only by its content (what we think about) but also by its dynamics (how easy, fast, coherent it is).  I explore the implications of the processing dynamics for affect and cognition. Affective Consequences. I am exploring the idea that one source of affective reactions to objects is fluency (ease or difficulty) of perceptual and conceptual processing.  This is because fluency reflects the organism’s cognitive resources and provides feedback about imporant qualities of incoming stimuli, such as familiarity. Consistent with these ideas, our studies show that facilitation of processing elicits positive affective reactions, as reflected in preference judgments and physiological markers (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998; Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001; Winkielman, Halberstadt, Fazendeiro, & Catty, 2006).  To account for such findings, my colleagues and I have proposed the hedonic fluency hypothesis (Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003; Winkielman, Schwarz, & Nowak, 2002). This hypothesis integrates a variety of apparently unrelated preference phenomena under a common theoretical framework. Such phenomena include: (i) the mere-exposure effect (repetition increases liking for objects), (ii) beauty-in-averages effect (prototypical objects are liked more then unusual ones), (iii) preferences for objects presented with higher clarity or higher figure-ground contrast, (iv) preference for objects presented at longer durations, and (v) preference for objects when mental processing of their attributes has been facilitated with perceptual or semantic primes.  My colleagues and I have also applied these ideas to understanding of aesthetic experience (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). This work is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (see award abstract).

Inferential Consequences

I investigate the judgmental role of “cognitive experiences”, such as recall difficulty, and the feeling of familiarity. Our studies show that the subjective retrieval experience or how you recall can override the implication of objectively available information or what you recall.  This process can lead to paradoxical effects, such as people judging their memory as worse when they recall more events (Winkielman, Schwarz, & Belli, 1998).  Further, we show that the impact of an experience, such as recall difficulty, on judgments is mediated by people’s beliefs about the source and meaning of the experience (Winkielman & Schwarz, 2001).  Interestingly, even though recall difficulty is objectively hard (requires physiological mobilization), it enters judgment only to the extent it changes the subjective sense of difficulty (von Helversen, Gendolla, Winkielman, & Schmidt, 2008).  Finally, I am very interested in the origins and the use of the familiarity in recognition memory.  We show that familiarity can be driven by driven up and down by perceptual fluency and disfluency (Huber, Clark, Huber, & Winkielman, 2008) and that familiarity that derives from conceptual relatedness lead memory astray, but only if the subjective experience is misattributed (Fazendeiro, Winkielman, Luo, & Lorah, 2005).

Embodiment of emotion

How do individuals process emotional information? My colleagues and I are exploring the idea that emotion processing involves “embodiment”, or the activation of emotion-relevant sensory-motor and somatic states in the individual. In that framework, embodiment occurs both when an emotion-eliciting object is physically present to the perceiver, and also when the emotion object is referred to by internal symbols (thoughts) or external symbols (e.g., words). To understand the role of sensory-motor and somatic states in emotion processing, we are currently investigating the perception of and memory for facial expressions of emotion, the use of emotion concepts, the role of imitation in cognition, and the influence of emotional states on perception and judgment (see Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005; Niedenthal, Winkielman, Mondillon, & Vermeulen, in press; Oberman, Winkielman, & Ramachandran, 2007; Winkielman, Niedenthal, & Oberman, 2008).  This work is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (see award abstract).

Emotion and Autism

What happens when there is a breakdown in the basic processes of emotion embodiment? Can it result in atypicalities of social functioning, as seen in individuals with autism? We have explored these issues in the domains of spontaneous mirroring, recognition of facial expression, and emotional startle modification (Clark, Winkielman, & McIntosh, 2008; McIntosh, Reichmann-Decker, Winkielman,  & Wilbarger, 2006; Oberman, Winkielman, & Ramachandran, in press;Wilbarger, McIntosh, & Winkielman, in press; Winkielman, McIntosh, & Oberman, in press). This work was sponsored by National Alliance for Autism Research.

Interaction of social and cognitive processes.

I am also interested in how social and cognitive processes interact in formation and expression of judgments, and in general cognitive functioning.First, I’ve explored how semantic categorization determines the judgmental impact of contextual information on social judgments.Our studies show that judgmental assimilation and contrast effects can be systematically produced with subliminal and supraliminal primes by manipulating categorical relation, similarity, and distinctiveness of available information (Winkielman & Schwarz, in preparation; Stapel & Winkielman, 1998).  Second, I’ve explored how people’s judgments are determined by inferences about communicative intentions (what the speaker means). Our studies show that such inferences lead to different reports about emotional episodes, different emotion frequency reports, and different self-evaluations of emotionality (Winkielman, Knauper, & Schwarz, 1998).  Finally, I am interested in the reciprocal influence of social and cognitive processing.  Our studies show that social interaction facilitates general cognitive functioning, as reflected on standard tests of mental capacity (Ybarra, Burnstein, Winkielman, Keller, Manis, Chan, & Rodriguez, 2008).