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

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

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

September 2018. Moral elevation is the feeling that results when observing another person engaging in exceptionally moral (e.g., selfless) behaviour. People usually report feeling inspired and uplifted, and we previously showed that these feelings lead to increased helping (Schnall, Fessler & Roper, 2010; Schnall & Roper, 2012). Our latest paper investigated the complex interplay of … More New Paper: Neural Underpinnings of Inspiration Elicited by Exceptional Role Models

August 2018. In a new paper we show that seemingly conflicting results on motivated distance perception can be explained by taking into account the role of affect. More specifically, there have been two sets of findings on distance perception to rewards. On the one hand, Balcetis & Dunning (2010) found that approaching positive objects makes … More New Paper: Affect Explains Conflicting Findings on Motivated Perception

July 2018. The latest paper with Konrad Bocian, Wieslaw Baryla, Wojciech Kulseza and Bogdan Wojciszke just came out at the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. We found that beliefs of self-other similarity, mere exposure, and facial mimicry influenced judgments of moral character measured in various ways. These effects were mediated by changes in liking of … More New Paper: Attitudes Influence Moral Character Evaluations

June 2018. A new paper with Philippe Gilchrist is now in press at the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. We found that rather than alleviating feelings of contamination, physical self-cleansing led to more contamination concerns and guilt when in the context of activated obsessive-type cognitions, possibly because it paradoxically makes cleanliness goals salient. … More New Paper: Physical Cleansing Increases Contamination Concerns

February 2018. Two students who applied to the lab were appointed as Gates Scholars to do their PhD degrees. This is a great success for the lab given that from over 800 applications only 35 such awards were given across entirely university! Rob Henderson will join from Yale, where he works with Paul Bloom. Rob … More Steve Rathje and Rob Henderson Appointed as PhD Gates Scholars

January 2018. Our latest theoretical perspective on morality, entitled ‘The moralization of the body: Protecting and expanding the boundaries of the self’, appeared in the Atlas of Moral Psychology, edited by Jesse Graham and Kurt Grey. The book pulls together most contemporary perspectives on the topic, including those involving debates and controversies. Order your copy … More New Chapter in Atlas of Moral Psychology

October 2017. On the occasion of the formal opening of West Court, a new addition to Jesus College, HRH Prinz Edward, Earl of Wessex visited the University. He showed great interest when Simone Schnall, a Fellow of the College, explained to him that we do psychological experiments on people!