This project focuses the relation between affect and cognition within a social cognition framework. Within a very general perspective the project includes the development of theoretical, empirical and methodological work, that allows the understanding of human being process information and the role that feeling of different nature can exert on it. The main hypothesis in study is that feelings may exert a regulatory function of how information is processed (Damasio, 1994; Garcia-Marques, 1999; Simon, 1967) and that familiarity is the feeling that can trigger different modes of processing information (Garcia-Marques & amp; Mackie, 2001).
The main goal of my research project is to understand the generalities of how human being process information and the specific role that different kind of feelings can have on it. This main goal encompass different approaches, that can be viewed as sub-goals:
- To develop knowledge regarding how individual process information in different domain of thought;
- To understand what are “feelings”, what different kind of feelings we have, how they are characterized, and how can they be measured;
- To understand the role of feeling in the human information processing system.