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FRANCESCO FORONI

Post Doctoral Research Fellow

Research Interests:

I am interested in the interplay between language, and cognitive and affective processes. To date, my research has focused on categorization processes and on the factors that influence the way in which we perceive others based on their group membership, both at the explicit and implicit level. The investigatory line I have pursued is how do verbal category labels affect the perception of category members. In particular, I was interested in how the affective features of labels (e.g., emotional strength) modulate our perception.

A second line of my research has focused on the relation between implicit and explicit processesinvolved in categorization. Recent work has shown short-term modifiability of automatic category judgments. In this context, my interest is on the explicit effects on implicit associations through some very short-term interventions (e.g., reading a story about the categories of interest). When participants are exposed to a scenario (i.e., story) that integrates existing concepts (i.e., categories) in a new manner and induces a meaningful, novel conceptual network, then they show instant modulations of implicit associations. My current plan is to integrate these lines of research with a special focus on the way language interacts, modulates, and 'binds' social information processing.

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Publications:

Foroni, F., & Semin, G. R. (2009). Language that puts you in touch with your bodily feelings. The multimodal responsiveness of affective expressions. Psychological Science, 20(8), 974-980.

Foroni, F., & Semin, G. R. (under review). A Smile and Beyond. Synchronization of Emotional Expressions and their Consequences upon Judgments.