Lecture: Wil Cunningham

Social Psychology Seminar Series

Friday, February 27
3:30 pm
Psychology Building, Room 128

This week's talk will be given by Wil Cunningham from Ohio State University. Wil is a social cognitive neuroscientist, and his research clearly involves all three areas. The main goal of his work is to understand the cognitive and motivational processes that underlie emotional responses. He focuses on the affective evaluations that guide thought and behavior. Wil uses theories and methods from both social psychology (e.g., models of attitudes) and from cognitive neuroscience (e.g., biological models of emotion; fMR/EEG methods). He has applied his research to the study of prejudice, decision-making, political attitudes, morality, and affective development in children. In his talk on Friday, Wil will present research that demonstrates that the relationship between amygdala activation and the valence of information depends upon chronic and contextual motivational goals.

Title: Motivation and the Amygdala: Goals Shape Activation

Abstract:
Although early research implicated the amygdala in the automatic processing of negative information, more recent research suggests that it plays a more general role in the processing of the motivational relevance of various stimuli. In several studies, we demonstrate that relationships between valence and amygdala contextually vary due to chronic and contextual goals. Implications for the social neuroscience of prejudice will be explored.