My research interests focus on the ways in which positive emotions affect individuals’ conceptualizations of themselves in relation to others and their environment. I utilize behavioral and psychophysiological measures to investigate the circumstances that cause individuals become open to affiliation and the physical and psychological effects of such openness, a state I describe as “other-focus.”
Positive Emotions and Infrahumanization
Research on cross-race face perception has found that individuals are much better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of members of other races. Though the cause of the “own-race bias” (ORB) is unknown, neuropsychological data indicates that the faces of other-race individuals are processed in a manner that closely resembles the processing of objects, indicating the ORB may be based on infrahumanization.
Positive emotions eliminate the ORB in facial recognition in whites by increasing whites’ ability to recognize black faces (Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005). I am interested in understanding whether the ORB is due to infrahumanization and is eliminated by positive emotion because positive emotions broaden individuals’ categories and induce other-focus.
The Process of Other-Focus: A Psychophysiological Model
My psychophysiological model of other-focus explains how individuals become open and attentive to conspecifics in their immediate environment due to exposure to safety and security cues or stress that is appraised as manageable. These experiences initiate oxytocin secretion and increased vagal tone, which in turn initiate other-focused attention and positive emotions. Attentional and emotional changes result in positive other-focused cognition and behavior. Other-focused moments build resources for both the individual and the community as social bonds are formed through positive interactions. Such resources accumulate and compound over time, resulting in decreased stress, increased psychological and physical well-being and longevity.
By combining insights from multiple theoretical traditions, the other-focus model is able to make broad predictions concerning when and how an other-focused state may come to be elicited, the manner in which it is manifested, and its psychological, physiological and social consequences over time.