Social Psychology Network

Maintained by Scott Plous, Wesleyan University

Jeff T. Larsen

Jeff T. Larsen

  • SPN Mentor

My primary research interests concern the structure of affect. Whereas affective processes have traditionally been characterized as falling along a single bipolar dimension, my research has examined the separability of positive and negative affect.

For example, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that in certain emotionally complex situations, people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Our research has also examined mixed emotional reactions to gamble outcomes. For example, we have examined how people can feel both good and bad about winning some amount of money when they could have won an even larger amount, an event we term a disappointing win.

Additional interests include affective influences on motor behavior, context effects on affective reactions, the role of effortful and controlled processes in affect, and psychophysiological indices of affect (e.g., event-related potentials, facial electromyography).

Primary Interests:

  • Attitudes and Beliefs
  • Emotion, Mood, Affect
  • Judgment and Decision Making
  • Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
  • Neuroscience, Psychophysiology

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21:26

What Mixed Emotions Can Tell Us About the Structure of Affect


Journal Articles:

Other Publications:

  • Larsen, J. T., Berntson, G. G., Poehlmann, K. M., Ito, T. A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). The psychophysiology of emotion. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. F. Barrett (Eds.), The handbook of emotions (3rd ed., pp. 180-195). New York: Guilford.
  • Larsen, J. T., Hemenover, S. H., Norris, C. J., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2003). Turning adversity to advantage: On the virtues of the coactivation of positive and negative emotions. In L. G. Aspinwall & U. M. Staudinger (Eds.), A psychology of human strengths: Perspectives on an emerging field (pp. 211-226). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Courses Taught:

  • Attitudes and Persuasion
  • Emotion
  • Introductory Social Psychology
  • Introductory Statistics
  • Psychophysiology
  • Research in Personality and Social Psychology
  • Seminar in Attitudes and Attitude Change

Jeff T. Larsen
Department of Psychology
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996
United States of America

  • Phone: (806) 742-3711, ext. 234
  • Fax: (865) 974-9530
  • Skype Name: jeff-larsen

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