The Social Regulation of Emotion

James A. Coan, Department of Psychology, UVA

March 27, 2017

5:15 - 6:15 p.m.

AA-G8

Links between social relationships and health are largely mediated through the impact of social relationships on emotion and emotional responding — that the social regulation of emotion not only largely accounts for these observations, but that it is indeed the baseline or default emotion regulatory strategy employed by most or all social animals, a perspective called the social baseline model. Social forms of emotion regulation can be mediational, where the presence of a social resource directly modifies an ongoing emotional response; or moderational, where socially relevant personality factors, past social experiences, or cognitive representations of either current relational partners or broader social networks modify an individual’s self-regulation needs or capabilities.

About the speaker

Jim Coan is interested in the neuroscience of emotional expression and individual emotion-regulation capabilities, as well as the social regulation of neural processes underlying emotional responses. These interests are necessarily multidisciplinary, requiring a diversity tools and methods from observational behavior coding to electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Additional interests include research methodology (particularly with regard to laboratory emotion elicitation), and behavior genetics.

James A. Coan, Associate Professor, Psychology, UVA

BS, Psychology, University of Washington; MA, Clinical Psychology, University of Arizona; Postdoc, Affective Neuroscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison

David Sloan Wilson, Director
Susan Ryan, Program Coordinator
evos@binghamton.edu