How an Embodied Mind Perspective can Influence the Study of Emotion Joshua Ian Davis (jdavis at barnard.edu), Moderator Department of Psychology, Barnard College of Columbia University 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA Christian Keysers (c.m.keysers at rug.nl) Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen & BCN NeuroImaging Center, University of Groningen A. Deusinglaan 2, 9713AW Groningen, The Netherlands Fritz Strack (strack at psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de) University of Wurzburg LS Psychologie II, Rontgenring 10, 97070 Wurzburg, Germany Jamil Zaki (jamil at psych.columbia.edu) Department of Psychology, Columbia University 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027, USA Keywords: Embodied Mind, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Emotion, Affect, Empathy, Botox, Facial Feedback, Neuroimaging, Psychophysiology Embodied approaches to studying the mind have received increasing attention over the last decade (e.g. Barsalou, 2008; Damasio, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Niedenthal, 2007). Common to these approaches is the goal of understanding how our processes for perception and action form a basis for our higher-level thoughts and emotions. While there has been a great deal of interest in embodied cognition as a theoretical stance, there have only been hints at the value of this approach to researchers across the cognitive sciences. This symposium is intended to help illustrate how an embodied mind perspective can change the research questions we ask and the ways we interpret results when studying emotion. We present four lines of research, bringing to bear psychophysiological, muscle paralysis, neuroimaging, and behavioral methods. We aim to broaden the discussion on the role of an embodied approach in emotion research and the cognitive sciences more generally. Jamil Zaki will begin the symposium by presenting research on the physiological mechanisms underlying empathic accuracy. Joshua Davis will then discuss research on the paralyzing effects of Botox on emotional experience. In the third talk, Christian Keysers will explore the embodied nature of the brain mechanisms by which we understand the emotions of others. Finally, Fritz Strack will discuss the various psychological mechanisms by which bodily actions can influence affect. Zaki: Shared physiological states and interpersonal understanding Empathy research has demonstrated that when perceivers and targets share autonomic arousal, perceivers can more accurately recognize those targets’ emotions (empathic accuracy). In particular, empathic accuracy has been shown when changes in skin conductance response for both perceivers and targets are correlated over time (known as physiological linkage). This finding suggests that embodying the states of others is an important route to interpersonal understanding. We replicated and extended this finding, illustrating how these effects depend on qualities of the target. Targets differ in emotional coherence (correlation between targets’ arousal and targets’ affect ratings), and empathic accuracy is highest when perceivers view targets with greater emotional coherence. Targets whose emotional states are accompanied by congruent bodily states become affectively “readable,” partially through facilitating shared arousal. We will discuss these findings and what they reveal about the mechanisms underlying the role of physiological linkage in empathic accuracy. Jamil Zaki will receive his Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University in 2010. His work on empathic accuracy has appeared in Psychological Science (Zaki, Bolger, & Ochsner, 2008). He is the recipient of a 2008 Autism Speaks Pre-Doctoral Award. Davis: The effects of Botox on emotional experience Prior research suggests that facial expressions are more than outward signals of what a person feels, but can also influence a person’s emotional experience. Earlier experiments guided participants to voluntarily pose or inhibit facial expressions. The voluntary nature of these tasks can lead to issues (e.g. participant awareness of the hypothesis, distraction, and various cognitive mediating variables) that can make interpretation of the findings more difficult. We compared participants receiving Botox – to treat facial wrinkles – to those receiving a control treatment. Crucially, Botox injections leave muscles in a state of flaccid paralysis by disrupting neural transmission at the