Speakers

How Our Environments Shape The Way We Feel

Olivia (Mandy) O’Neil, George Mason University

David Lydon-Staley, University of Pennsylvania

No Ambivalence About It: Mixed Feelings are Essential to a Full Theory of Affective Neuroscience

Our media use is intimately bound up with our emotional experiences. Fluctuations in our emotions can lead us to engage with media, and media are often designed to elicit emotions upon exposure. With two examples, we will complicate our thinking about media’s effects on emotions by examining bidirectional associations between emotions and media. The first example will focus on people’s everyday engagement with the news. The second example will focus on epistemic emotions and their expression on knowledge-rich platforms (e.g., Wikipedia). Throughout, the need for intensive repeated measures data coupled with conceptual and analytic frameworks that capture the complex interplay between person and media environment will be emphasized.

Gregory Bratman, University of Washington

Nature Contact and Human Well-Being

Studies across multiple disciplines demonstrate an association of nature contact with human affective benefits. However, much less is known about the causal mechanisms underlying these effects. This presentation will explore the theories and potential pathways that help to explain these impacts, including new work at the nexus of environmental psychology and exposure science. For example, can measurement tools and insights from research on the harmful effects of pollution also be applied to investigate the beneficial effects of nature exposure? In these and other ways, increased understanding of the affective impacts of nature experience can be integrated into the broader context of research on environmental determinants of health. This talk will present a framework that addresses how various elements from our surrounding urban and natural environments interact to lead to negative affective outcomes in some cases, and positive emotional well-being in others, and how these processes can differ across individuals. Ultimately, this evidence can help guide decision-making in urban planning and landscape architecture — informing designs that aim to improve human health.

Best Dissertation in Affective Science Award (2024)

Anthony Vaccaro, University of Southern California

No Ambivalence About It: Mixed Feelings are Essential to a Full Theory of Affective Neuroscience

Mixed feelings-simultaneously experiencing positive and negative emotions-are commonly reported in day to day life. These moments can be confusing, meaningful, distressing, reflective of complexity, or even aesthetically beautiful. Yet, compared to their ubiquity, they remain vastly understudied in affective science, and especially in neuroscience. These experiences are understudied largely due to methodological difficulties in including them in our standard measures, as well as their general absence from prominent theories of affect in the brain. In this talk, I will propose that exploring the processes and scenarios of when people report mixed feelings is an essential stepping stone to a comprehensive theory of affect. Additionally, I will discuss some of my fMRI studies which have aimed to address questions about mixed feelings on both a state level, and within the broader scope of well-being. Altogether, this talk aims to propose new directions and questions for affective neuroscience, and demonstrate both their theoretical and practical importance.

Early-Career in Affective Science Award (2024)

Brett Q. Ford, University of Toronto

Mid-Career Trajectory in Affective Science Award (2024)

Jamil Zaki, Stanford University

Best Dissertation in Affective Science Award (2025)

Ke Wang, University of Virginia

Essays on Emotion and Decision Making, with Implications for Policy

Despite significant growth in the field of emotion and decision-making, two areas remain relatively underdeveloped: the role specific positive emotions play in decision-making and the role of emotion regulation over time. My dissertation tackled these gaps with three sets of studies. The first set challenged the prior meta-analytic conclusion that positive emotions have no protective effects on appetitive risk behaviors. Extending the Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF), we hypothesized and found that gratitude, but not all positive emotions, discouraged tobacco use, a major cause of preventable death. The second set of studies challenged the assumption that gratitude necessarily confers salutary effects on moral decision-making. Extending social-functional theories of emotion and the ATF, we predicted and found that gratitude increased cheating when cheating would benefit others. The last set of studies evaluated the extent to which a brief reappraisal intervention would create long-term benefits for the early education workforce, a group with the highest burnout rates in the U.S. Prior emotion regulation research has rarely examined this population and largely focused on short-term outcomes. My presentation will share the results of the studies and discuss how they extend our understanding of appraisal processes in affective science, with practical takeaways for creating a healthier, more ethical, and resilient society.

Early-Career in Affective Science Award (2025)

Elise Kalokerinos, University of Melbourne

Mid-Career Trajectory in Affective Science Award (2025)

Derek Isaacowitz, Washington University in St. Louis

Aging as a Model System for Affective Science

What can the study of human aging tell us that informs affective science more generally? I consider 2 ways in which investigating aging can be helpful to affective scientists: first, it forces a consideration of both between-group differences as well as within-person changes in affective processes. Taking the study of emotion regulation specifically, despite an explosion of research on the frequency and effectiveness of different strategies, it may not be the case that the strategy level is most useful for considering between-group differences and within-person changes. Instead, studying aging suggests that the tactic level may be especially useful, though tools are still needed that can account for the hierarchical nature of dynamic changes in emotion regulation behavior. Second, investigating aging also forces a consideration of how affective processes unfold in the context of physical, cognitive and neural changes that happen with advancing age. For example, findings that age-related positivity effects vary between the lab and home constrain causal mechanisms that might underlie positivity effects when observed. Assertions that some emotion regulation behaviors are more cognitively-demanding than others may need revision given that older adults with a range of cognitive abilities still seem to be able to use them. Together, studying affect in the context of aging can inform the plausibility of theoretical models in affective science more generally.