May 23 – Piotr Winkielman: Embodiment of emotion: Why, how, and when

Recent theories of embodied cognition offer exciting new ways to understand the processing of emotionally significant information.   I will show data from my and related labs that both perceiving and thinking about emotion involves somatovisceral and motoric processes.  Further, I will show that this involvement is causal, as manipulating it changes the processing of emotion, as well as its influence on cognition.  Embodiment is also useful, as individuals, such as autists, who do not show it, are impaired in certain kinds of emotion tasks.  However, I will also discuss the contextual nature of embodiment -- when exactly we do it.  I will also show evidence that emotion processing can occur using non-embodied pathways.  All this will hopefully offer a more differentiated perspective on the role of embodied processes in emotion, and processing in general.