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C. Nathan DeWall
University of Kentucky, USA www.uky.edu/~njdewa2/home.html What does your research focus on? My research emphasizes the pervasively social nature of human beings, a nature that includes a powerful motivation to form and maintain social connections, a propensity to behave aggressively, and a sophisticated capacity to self-regulate. My research program focuses on these three related processes: (1) the consequences of social rejection and acceptance, (2) understanding risk and resiliency factors for aggression, and (3) why humans and non-human animals succeed and fail at self-regulation. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
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Yanchao Bi
Beijing Normal University, China http://psychbrain.bnu.edu.cn/home/yanchaobi What does your research focus on? My current research focuses on the functional and neural architecture of concepts — the meaning of words, pictures, and sounds. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? My earlier work was on the psychological mechanisms of language processing. I was always interested in the meaning of words, which goes beyond language and represents the interface between language and a whole range of other cognitive domains.
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Amy Cuddy
Harvard Business School, USA http://people.hbs.edu/acuddy What does your research focus on? Much of my work has focused on social categories (e.g., Asian Americans, elderly people, Latinos, working mothers) — how they are judged by others and by their own members (i.e., stereotyping) and how these judgments set the tone and content of social interactions (i.e., prejudice and discrimination). My collaborators and I have developed a body of research that concentrates on judgments of other groups and individuals along two core trait dimensions, warmth and competence, and how these judgments shape and motivate our social emotions, intentions, and behaviors.
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Amori Yee Mikami
University of Virginia, USA http://people.virginia.edu/~am4jd/ What does your research focus on? Nearly all people can remember someone from his or her own childhood who didn’t get along with the peer group. Yet, when asked why this child had difficulty, most people name behaviors within the disliked child as the source of the problem (e.g., that child couldn’t share; that child told lies). Few consider social contextual factors, such as prejudice in the peer group, or a peer climate that discourages inclusion, that also affect the likelihood that a child will be accepted. I am fascinated by the understudied idea that social contextual factors may influence peer relationships.
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Aaron Kay
Duke University, USA www.fuqua.duke.edu/faculty_research/faculty_directory/kay/ What does your research focus on? My research focuses on the relation between motivation, implicit social cognition, and broad societal issues. I have a particular interest in how basic motivations and needs – including ones that people may not be entirely aware of – manifest as specific social and societal beliefs. These include (but are not limited to) the causes and consequences of stereotyping and system justification, religious and political belief, and the attitudes people hold towards their institutions and social systems. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
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Susanne Scheibe
University of Groningen, The Netherlands www.rug.nl/staff/s.scheibe What does your research focus on? I study how emotional experience and emotion regulation change as people age, and how such changes affect important realms of life, such as work life. When looking at the many (mostly negative) changes that accompany aging, emotions clearly stand out. Emotional experience becomes more positive and more stable with age at least until people reach their 70s and 80s. This is actually surprising given that a large part of emotion regulation requires cognitive control, which declines more than other competencies with age.