Piotr
Winkielman -- Home Page
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Academic history
Professor of Psychology:
2007: Psychology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California
Associate Professor:
2003-2007: Psychology, UCSD
Assistant Professor:
1998-2003: Social,
Cognitive, and Neuroscience Programs, Psychology, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado.
Post-doctoral Fellow:
1997 - 1998: Social
Neuroscience Lab (now at University of
Chicago), Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus.
Graduate Student:
1991-1997 Ph.D: Social
Psychology, Research Center for
Group Dynamics, Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Undergraduate Student:
1988-1991: Dipl.Psych. Psychology,
Minor, Philosophy, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany.
1985-1988: Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
Research Interests
My research explores the interplay between emotion, cognition, embodiment
and consciousness. I am particularly interested in implications of this
work for social cognition. In my work, I draw on diverse methods of
social and cognitive psychology, including techniques from social neuroscience.
1) Affect, motivation, and awareness. Researchers
typically make two assumptions about affective reactions. First,
affective reactions are intrinsically conscious (i.e., subjectively
"felt"). Second, affective reactions influence behavior
regardless of motivation. Our studies
question both assumptions. First, we show that behavior can be influenced
when a person is unaware of having an affective reaction (in addition to the
person being unaware of the stimulus causing an affective reaction). This
suggests the possibility of a genuinely unconscious or "unfelt"
emotion. Second, we show that "unconscious" affective reactions
primarily influence behaviors that are motivationally relevant. For
empirical papers, see: Winkielman, Zajonc, & Schwarz, 1997; Winkielman,
Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005. For reviews, see Berridge &
Winkielman, 2003; and Winkielman & Berridge, 2004. For a
comprehensive treatment of the relation between emotion and consciousness, see
the book Emotion
and Consciousness (eds. Feldman-Barrett, Niedenthal, & Winkielman,
2005). For my general views on consciousness, see Winkielman & Schooler,
2008. Recently, my colleague and I began to investigate the role of
affect and motivation in decisions, including the neural basis of this
influence (Winkielman, Knutson, Paulus, & Trujillo, 2007; Knutson, Wimmer, Kuhnen,
& Winkielman, 2008).
2) Processing dynamics. Information processing can be
characterized not only by its content (what we think about) but also by its
dynamics (how easy, fast, coherent it is). I explore the implications of
the processing dynamics for affect and cognition.
Affective Consequences. I am exploring the
idea that one source of affective reactions to objects is fluency (ease or difficulty) of perceptual and conceptual
processing. This is because fluency reflects the organism's cognitive
resources and provides feedback about important qualities of incoming stimuli,
such as familiarity. Consistent with these ideas, our studies show that facilitation
of processing elicits positive affective reactions, as reflected in preference
judgments and physiological markers (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998;
Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001; Winkielman, Halberstadt, Fazendeiro, &
Catty, 2006). To account for such findings, my colleagues and I have
proposed the hedonic fluency hypothesis (Winkielman, Schwarz,
Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003; Winkielman, Schwarz, & Nowak, 2002). This
hypothesis integrates a variety of apparently unrelated preference phenomena
under a common theoretical framework. Such phenomena include: (i) the
mere-exposure effect (repetition increases liking for objects), (ii)
beauty-in-averages effect (prototypical objects are liked more than unusual
ones), (iii) preferences for objects presented with higher clarity or higher
figure-ground contrast, (iv) preference for objects presented at longer
durations, and (v) preference for objects when mental processing of their
attributes has been facilitated with perceptual or semantic primes. My colleagues
and I have also applied these ideas to understanding of aesthetic experience
(Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004).
Recently, we have become interested in how the hedonic value of fluency
and familiarity depends on context and have shown that familiarity is “warmer”
in a negative mood (DeVries, Holland, Chenier, Starr, & Winkielman,
2010). This work was supported by
a grant from the National Science Foundation (see award
abstract).
Inferential Consequences. I investigate the
judgmental role of "cognitive experiences", such as recall
difficulty, and the feeling of familiarity. Our studies show that the
subjective retrieval experience or how you recall can override the implication
of objectively available information or what you recall. This
process can lead to paradoxical effects, such as people judging their memory as
worse when they recall more events (Winkielman, Schwarz, & Belli,
1998). Further, we show that the impact of an experience, such as recall
difficulty, on judgments is mediated by people's beliefs about the source and
meaning of the experience (Winkielman & Schwarz, 2001).
Interestingly, even though recall difficulty is objectively hard (requires
physiological mobilization), it enters judgment only to the extent it changes
the subjective sense of difficulty (von Helversen, Gendolla, Winkielman,
& Schmidt, 2008). Finally, I am very interested in the origins and
the use of the familiarity in recognition memory. We show that
familiarity can be driven by driven up and down by perceptual fluency and
disfluency (Huber, Clark, Huber, & Winkielman, 2008) and that familiarity
that derives from conceptual relatedness lead memory astray, but only if the
subjective experience is misattributed (Fazendeiro, Winkielman, Luo, &
Lorah, 2005).
3) Embodiment of emotion. How do individuals process emotional
information? My colleagues and I are exploring the idea that emotion processing
involves embodiment, or the
activation of emotion-relevant sensory-motor and somatic states in the
individual. In that framework, embodiment occurs both when an emotion-eliciting
object is physically present to the perceiver, and also when the emotion object
is referred to by internal symbols (thoughts) or external symbols (e.g.,
words). To understand the role of sensory-motor and somatic states in emotion
processing, we are investigating the perception of and memory for facial expressions
of emotion, the understanding of abstract emotion concepts, the role of
imitation in cognition, and the influence of emotional states on perception and
judgment (see Halberstadt, Winkielman, Niedenthal, & Dalle, 2009;
Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005; Niedenthal,
Winkielman, Mondillon, & Vermeulen, 2009; Oberman, Winkielman, &
Ramachandran, 2007; Winkielman, Niedenthal, & Oberman, 2008). This
work is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (see award
abstract).
4) Emotion and Autism. What happens when basic mechanisms of emotion
processing and embodiment go awry? My
colleagues and I examine possible consequences by studying individuals with
atypical social functioning, as persons with autism? We have explored these
issues in the domains of spontaneous mirroring, recognition of facial
expression, and emotional startle modification (Clark, Winkielman, &
McIntosh, 2008; McIntosh, Reichmann-Decker, Winkielman, & Wilbarger,
2006; Oberman, Winkielman, & Ramachandran, 2009; Wilbarger, McIntosh, &
Winkielman, 2009; Winkielman, McIntosh, & Oberman, 2009). This work was
sponsored by National Alliance for Autism
Research.
5)
Interaction of social and cognitive processes. I am also interested in how social and
cognitive processes interact in formation and expression of judgments, and in
general cognitive functioning. First,
I’ve explored how semantic categorization determines the judgmental impact of
contextual information on social judgments.
Our studies show that judgmental assimilation and contrast effects can
be systematically produced with subliminal and supraliminal primes by
manipulating categorical relation, similarity, and distinctiveness of available
information (Winkielman & Schwarz, in preparation; Stapel & Winkielman,
1998). Second, I’ve explored how people's
judgments are determined by inferences about communicative intentions (what the
speaker means). Our studies show that
such inferences lead to different reports about emotional episodes, different
emotion frequency reports, and different self-evaluations of emotionality
(Winkielman, Knauper, & Schwarz, 1998). Finally, I
am interested in the reciprocal influence of social and cognitive
processing. Our studies show that social interaction facilitates general
cognitive functioning, as reflected on standard tests of mental capacity
(Ybarra, Burnstein, Winkielman, Keller, Manis, Chan, & Rodriguez, 2008).
Some representative publications
(email me for a full CV)
For reprints, check for PDF next to reference or e-mail me at the address
above. PDFs are for personal use
only. Download free PDF reader here.
Books
·
Feldman-Barrett,
L., Niedenthal, P., & Winkielman, P. (2005). Emotion and
Consciousness. Guilford Press. New York. Purchase
at Guilford
(code 5T for discount) or at Amazon.
·
Harmon-Jones, E. & Winkielman, P. (2007). Social
Neuroscience. Integrating biological and psychological explanations of social
behavior. Guilford Press. New York. Purchase at Guilford
(code 5T for discount) or at Amazon.
Articles and chapters
- De Vries,
M., Holland, R.W., Chenier, T., Starr, M.J., & Winkielman, P. (in
press). Happiness cools
the warm glow of familiarity: Psychophysiological evidence that mood modulates
the familiarity-affect link. Psychological
Science. Abstract. For
online-first version, click here PDF OR follow this
link.
- Halberstadt,
J., Winkielman, P., Niedenthal, P. M., & Dalle, N. (2009). Emotional conception: How embodied
emotion concepts guide perception and facial action. Psychological Science, 20, 1254-1261.
Abstract, PDF.
- Niedenthal, P. M., Winkielman,
P. Mondillon, L., &
Vermeulen, N. (2009). Embodiment of Emotional Concepts: Evidence from EMG
Measures. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 96, 1120–1136. Abstract, PDF
- Vul,
E., Harris C., Winkielman, P., & Pashler, H. (2009). Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI
Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 4, 274-290. Abstract, PDF. Our reply to comments is here.
- Oberman, L. M., Winkielman, P., &
Ramachandran, V.S. (2009). Slow echo: Facial EMG evidence for the
delay of spontaneous, but not voluntary emotional mimicry in children with
autism spectrum disorders. Developmental Science, 12, 510–520. Abstract, PDF.
- Wilbarger,
J. L., McIntosh, D. N., & Winkielman, P. (2009). Startle modulation in
autism: Positive affective stimuli enhance startle response. Neuropsychologia, 47, 1323–1331. Abstract. PDF
- Winkielman, P., McIntosh, D. N.,
& Oberman, L. (2009). Embodied and disembodied emotion
processing: Learning from and about typical and autistic
individuals. Emotion Review, 2, 178-190. Abstract, PDF.
- Clark, T. F., Winkielman, P. &
McIntosh, D. N. (2008). Autism and
the extraction of emotion from briefly presented facial expressions:
Stumbling at the first step of empathy.
Emotion, 8, 803-809. Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman,
P. & Schooler, J. (2008). Unconscious, conscious, and metaconscious in
social cognition. Strack, F. & Foerster, J. (Eds.), Social
cognition: The basis of human interaction. (pp 49-69). Philadelphia:
Psychology Press. PDF.
- Huber,
D. E., Clark, T., Curran, T., & Winkielman, P. (2008). Effects of
repetition priming on recognition memory: Testing a perceptual
fluency-disfluency model. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 1305–1324. Abstract, PDF.
- Knutson, B., Wimmer, G. E., Kuhnen,
C. M., & Winkielman, P. (2008). Nucleus accumbens activation
mediates the influence of reward cues on financial risk taking. NeuroReport,
19, 509-513. Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Niedenthal, P., &
Oberman, L. (2008). The embodied emotional mind. In Semin, G. R.,
& Smith, E. R. (Eds.) Embodied grounding: Social, cognitive,
affective, and neuroscientific approaches. (pp. 263-288). New York:
Cambridge University Press. PDF, (link
to the book)
- von Helversen, B., Gendolla, G. H. E,
Winkielman, P., & Schmidt, R.E. (2008). Exploring the
hardship of ease: Subjective and objective effort in the ease-of-processing
paradigm. Motivation and Emotion. Abstract,
PDF
- Ybarra,
O., Burnstein, E., Winkielman, P., Keller, M.C, Manis, M., Chan, E., &
Rodriguez, J. (2008). Mental exercising through simple socializing: Social
interaction promotes general cognitive functioning. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 248-259. Abstract.
PDF.
- Winkielman,
P., Knutson, B., Paulus, M.P. & Trujillo, J.T. (2007). Affective
influence on decisions: Moving towards the core mechanisms. Review
of General Psychology, 11, 179-192. Abstract, PDF
- Oberman, L., Winkielman, P., &
Ramachandran, V. S. (2007). Face to face: Blocking facial mimicry
can selectively impair recognition of emotional expressions. Social
Neuroscience, 2, 167-178. Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Halberstadt, J.,
Fazendeiro, T. & Catty, S. (2006). Prototypes are attractive
because they are easy on the mind. Psychological Science, 17.
799-806. Abstract, PDF
- McIntosh, D. N., Reichmann-Decker, A.,
Winkielman, P., & Wilbarger, J. L. (2006). When the social mirror
breaks: Deficits in automatic, but not voluntary mimicry of emotional
facial expressions in autism. Developmental Science, 9, 295-302. Abstract, PDF.
- Fazendeiro, T., Winkielman,
P., Luo, C., & Lorah, C. (2005). False recognition across
meaning, language, and stimulus format: Conceptual relatedness and the
feeling of familiarity. Memory and Cognition. 33, 249-260. Abstract, PDF.
- Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L., Winkielman,
P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2005). Embodiment in
Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 9, 184-211. Abstract,
PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C., &
Wilbarger, J. L. (2005). Unconscious affective reactions to masked
happy versus angry faces influence consumption behavior and judgments of
value. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1, 121-135. Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C., &
Wilbarger, J. L. (2005). Emotion, behavior, and conscious
experience: Once more without feeling. In Feldman-Barrett, L., Niedenthal,
P., & Winkielman, P. (Eds). Emotion and Consciousness. Guilford
Press. New York.
PDF.
- Reber, R., Schwarz, N. & Winkielman, P.
(2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the
perceiver's processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology
Review, 8, 364-382. Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P. & Berridge, K. C. (2004). Unconscious
emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 120-123.
Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P. & Berridge, K. C. (2003). Irrational
wanting and sub-rational liking: How rudimentary motivational and
affective processes shape preferences and choices. Political
Psychology, 24, 657-680. Abstract, PDF.
- Berridge, K. C., & Winkielman, P. (2003).
What is an unconscious emotion? The case for unconscious 'liking'. Cognition
and Emotion, 17, 181-211. Abstract, PDF
- Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., Fazendeiro, T.,
& Reber, R. (2003). The hedonic marking of processing fluency:
Implications for evaluative judgment. In J. Musch & K. C. Klauer
(Eds.), The Psychology of Evaluation: Affective Processes in Cognition
and Emotion. (pp. 189-217). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. (publisher's
book webpage here). PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., & Nowak, A.
(2002). Affect and processing dynamics: Perceptual fluency enhances
evaluations. In S. Moore & M. Oaksford (Eds.), Emotional Cognition:
From brain to behaviour. (pp. 111-136). Amsterdam, NL: John Benjamins. See
book
website here. Read the chapter (#5) on the web here,
or in PDF.
- Winkielman P., Berntson G.
G., & Cacioppo J. T. (2001). The psychophysiological perspective on
the social mind. In A. Tesser & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Blackwell
Handbook of Social Psychology: Intraindividual Processes. (pp.
89-108). Oxford:
Blackwell. (publisher's
book webpage here). PDF.
- Winkielman, P., &
Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Mind at ease puts a smile on the face:
Psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation increases
positive affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 989-1000.
Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P., &
Schwarz, N. (2001). How pleasant was your childhood? Beliefs about memory
shape inferences from experienced difficulty of recall. Psychological
Science, 12, 176-179. Abstract,
PDF
- Skurnik, I.,
Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2000). Drawing inferences from
feelings: The role of naive beliefs. In H. Bless & J. P. Forgas
(Eds.), The message within: The role of subjective experience in social
cognition and behavior. (pp. 162-175). Philadelphia: Psychology Press. PDF.
- Belli, R. F., Winkielman, P., Read, D. J.,
Schwarz, N., & Lynn, S. J. (1998). Recalling more childhood
events leads to judgments of poorer memory: Implications for the
recovered/false memory debate. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5, 318-323.
Abstract, PDF
- Reber, R., Winkielman, P. & Schwarz, N. (1998).
Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological
Science, 9, 45-48. Abstract,
PDF
- Stapel, D. A. & Winkielman, P. (1998). Assimilation
and contrast as a function of context-target similarity, distinctness, and
dimensional relevance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 634-646.
Abstract. PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Knauper, B. & Schwarz, N.
(1998). Looking back at anger: Reference periods change the
interpretation of emotion frequency questions. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 75, 719-728. Abstract, PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N. & Belli, R.
F. (1998). The role of ease of retrieval and attribution in memory
judgments: Judging your memory as worse despite recalling more events. Psychological
Science, 9, 124-126. Abstract,
PDF.
- Winkielman, P., Zajonc, R.
B., & Schwarz, N. (1997). Subliminal affective priming resists
attributional interventions. Cognition and Emotion, 11, 433-465.
Abstract, PDF.
Po Polsku (in Polish):
·
Winkielman,
P. (2008). Psychologia społeczna a neuronauki: Dominacja, separacja,
czy satysfakcjonujący związek? [in Polish] Social psychology
and neuroscience: Domination, separation, or a fulfilling relationship? Psychologia
Społeczna, 1,
11–22. Abstract, PDF.
Bardziej
przystepna wersja (Popular article in Polish on the relation between psychology
and neurosciences)
·
Winkielman,
P. (2006). Nierozłączne nauki dwie. (Inseparable sciences). Charaktery,
10, 8-12. PDF
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