Elaine Fox, BA, PhD, Professor

Current Research Programme

(A) Emotion.

My research programme on human emotion consists of a number of projects at the interface between cognitive psychology, social psychology, clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. The research is guided by the principle that psychological theory must be grounded in real-life experiences and that the social context in which behaviour takes place is as important as the evolutionary history of that behaviour. Some illustrative projects are summarized below.

Impact of Socially Significant Stimuli: One project in collaboration with Dr Andrew Mathews, Dr Jenny Yiend and Dr Andy Calder (MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge) concerns the nature of gaze processing. Where other people look can reveal where they are attending, and thus indicate sources of potential interest in the environment. Moreover, the human brain may have evolved to be particularly good at detecting these socially significant signals, with cells specialized for processing eyes. We replicated previous findings that the direction of eye-gaze does indeed induce reflexive shifts of attention. However, we extended this in important ways in showing that the emotional expression of the face could modify this effect. To illustrate, the visual attention of people who were relatively anxious was manipulated much more strongly by the direction of eye-gaze of fearful faces, relative to angry or happy expressions. In a separate project with colleagues at the University of Essex we have recently found that the basic mechanisms of human attention can be modified by the social significance of the stimuli being processed. For example, in a simple visual search task it has been found that threat-related facial expressions are detected much more quickly than either happy or neutral facial expressions. Recently, we have found that just the eye-region is enough to produce this effect and that the addition of the full-face does not further enhance this effect. This suggests that the eyes are indeed a critical stimulus for the modulation of human attention.

Information Processing Biases in Affective Disorders: I am currently conducting several separate projects investigating the role of information processing biases in determining emotional disorders. This research is largely funded by the Wellcome Trust and examines the notion that fundamental differences in how socially relevant information (e.g., people whispering to each other) is processed may underlie many anxiety disorders. In a number of experiments we have shown that anxious people selectively process threat-related information, especially when this is presented in a socially-relevant context (e.g., public speaking). A particular focus of my work has been the discovery that anxiety may be associated with a delay in the disengagement of attention from threat-relevant stimuli, rather than the faster detection of these stimuli in the environment. Ongoing projects are examining whether these variations in attentional disengagement are correlated with increases in worry and negative rumination.
Role of Positive Emotions in Determining Subjective Well-being: A new project has just begun in collaboration with Dr Andrew Mathews (MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge) and Dr Kevin Dutton (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge), which has received funding from the Templeton foundation. This project is using well-established experimental procedures, which have been used previously to modify cognitive biases in anxious people. However, in this case we are investigating the role of positive emotions (gratitude) in determining subjective well-being. This is an interesting collaboration allowing us to investigate the nature of the relations between feelings of well-being and a person’s sense of spirituality. Does feeling grateful (e.g., to God?) really confer benefits beyond simply feeling lucky?

Social Cognition: I have recently edited a special issue of the
international journal Visual Cognition entitled “Visual Social Cognition”. The aim of this special issue aims to bring together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology and social psychology to explore the nature of the neural and cognitive processes underlying the processing of socially-relevant stimuli. The idea is that visual processes modulate many social interactions. For instance, vision provides us with information about the emotional state of the person we are with, it provides us with information about where a companion is attending, it provides us with information that may be used directly to guide imitation. Our understanding about the role of visual processes in social interactions is being advanced by linking work on the basic neural and cognitive mechanisms mediating vision with work on the social and emotional context in which the processing takes place. Bringing these disparate research groups together was a fundamental aim of the special issue, which was published in 2005.

(B) Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on Humans

Impact of Electromagnetic Fields on Human Health and Well-being: I am currently heading a project funded by the Department of Health under the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR). This involves the co-ordination of a multidisciplinary team of experimental and social psychologists, biomedical and electronic engineers, physicists and medical practitioners. There is widespread public concern regarding the health effects of mobile phones and their associated base-stations. The current project will provide scientifically valid evidence on the effect of radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) on physiological, psychological, and health functioning for people who experience hypersensitivity to RF-EMFs and for matched control participants. A new psychometric instrument to measure electromagnetic hypersensitivity will also be developed in order to identify people who may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of RF-EMFs. Thus, the research will provide evidence for the development and preparation of appropriate advice to be given to the general public on the possible health and psychological effects of exposure to electromagnetic emissions from mobile phone base-stations.

Impact of Mobile Phone Electromagnetic Fields on Human Memory and Attention. In collaboration with Prof Riccardo Russo, Prof Dariush Mirshekar, Dr Caterina Cinel,and Dr Angela Boldini we are investigating whether mobile phone hand-sets affect cognitive functioning. This project is also funded by the Department of Health under the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR). A number of double-blind experiments are being conducted to determine whether standard RF emissions from GSM mobile phones (900 Mhz and 1800 Mhz) influence fundamental mechanisms of human attention and short-term memory.