Cambridge Body, Mind and Behaviour

Dr. Simone Schnall

Body, Mind, and Behaviour Laboratory

We investigate how bodily, emotional, and social factors influence judgments, decisions, and behaviours.

Current research topics include judgments and decisions in moral, political, and legal contexts, aesthetic perceptions, and risky behaviours in finance (e.g., risk management in banks). In general we are interested in understanding why people often think and behave in seemingly surprising ways, and how to capitalize on insights from behavioural science to encourage adaptive choices in everyday life.

New Paper: Bodily Sensitivity Associated with Risk Perception

March 9, 2020

Some of our latest work concerns how people perceive their bodily sensations, and how they are relevant to a wide variety of judgments. Here we found that people who are easily disgusted, because they are highly attuned to their bodily cues, are also highly sensitive to risks. They judge all kinds of risks to be … More New Paper: Bodily Sensitivity Associated with Risk Perception

New Paper: Making Up for Moral Failures

March 9, 2020

Previous research has shown that people try to ‘make up’ for their moral failures by engaging in positive behaviours, in an attempt to re-establish their positive self-image. We tested whether similar compensation strategies are at play when people violate normative eating practices. Across three experiments we found that participants who recalled an overeating (vs. neutral) … More New Paper: Making Up for Moral Failures

New Paper: Role of Oxytocin in Mimicry Depends on Emotion

March 9, 2020

A growing body of work has documented oxytocin’s role in social functioning, to test whether this hormone facilitates spontaneous mimicry of others’ emotional expressions. In a double-blind, randomized trial, adult Caucasian males (n = 145) received a nasal spray of either oxytocin or placebo before completing a facial mimicry task. Facial expressions were coded using automated face … More New Paper: Role of Oxytocin in Mimicry Depends on Emotion

TEDx Talk 2014

Some of our work concerns how people make sense of the physical environment. Here you can watch a brief TEDx talk on "How your bodily state affects your perception."