Clore, Gerald L.
Primary Appointment
Commonwealth Professor, Psychology
Contact Information
109B Gilmer Hall
Telephone: 982-0449
Email: gc4q@virginia.edu
Research Disciplines
Psychology
Research Interests
The effects of emotional experience on cognitive performance and behavior, including the role of emotion in art and other aesthetic experiences.
Research Description
I study emotion, asking questions about what emotions are, how they arise, and what they are for. In general, emotions are emergent affective states that arise when the same kind of goodness or badness is registered at he same time in multiple embodied ways. Our research examines the roles that affective reactions play in cognition and perception, including attention, judgment, memory, and thought. Much of what people do and decide in everyday life depends on what they feel. And in psychology, many of the textbook phenomena in cognitive psychology turn out to have an affective trigger. Additionally, we are interested in the role of emotion in art and other aesthetic experiences.
UNLEASH (Undergraduate Research)
We are primarily interested in studying the effects of emotional experience on cognitive performance and behavior. Some of our research questions are: 1) Do emotions influence how we perceive our environment and ourselves? 2) Do emotions help us remember? 3) Do happy people think differently than sad people?
The small, cohesive atmosphere of our lab group provides opportunities for RAs to become intimately involved in all aspects of the research process. First-semester RAs are mainly responsible for scheduling participants, running experiments, and working with data. With increasing experience, lab members are encouraged to participate in the development of new research designs and the interpretation of results. Contact Dr. Clore: gc4q@virginia.edu