This page lists all my published works, organized by year of publication. Click a paper’s title to visit the publisher page and access the official version. Use Abstract to reveal the summary, and Citation for the APA 7th-edition reference.* = co-first authorship

Code for this page adapted from Jeffrey Girard.

Filter by keyword

Show All
Adolescent Development
Adult Aging
Autonomic Physiology
Emotional Experience
Inflammation
Interoception
Lifespan Development
Neuroimaging
Social Processes

In Press

Emotional attention moderates the link between allostatic interoceptive network organization and depression in adolescents
Frye, Lin, Feldman, Prinstein, Cohen, Telzer & Lindquist
Affective Science
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
The onset of depression and depressive symptoms spikes during adolescence, and the prevalence of depression in adolescents appears to be increasing over time (Daly, 2022). In previous research, we found that greater integration of an allostatic interoceptive system (AIS), a brain system involved in the predictive regulation of the body, prospectively predicted more depressive symptoms in adolescents two years later, mediated by a greater tendency to ruminate (Frye et al., 2025). This pattern of brain organization may reflect excessive internal focus. Here, we examine the potential moderating effect of emotional awareness on the relationship between AIS integration and prospective depression symptoms. Specifically, using data from a larger longitudinal study of adolescents beginning in 6th-8th grade, we test whether trait emotional clarity or emotional attention moderates the relationship between AIS global efficiency during a resting-state fMRI scan and prospective depressive symptoms assessed an average of two years later (N= 117, 55% female, Minitial age= 12.99, Mage at follow-up= 14.74). We found that for adolescents who paid little attention to their emotions, greater AIS integration was related to lower prospective depressive symptoms, whereas for adolescents who paid above-average attention to their emotions, greater AIS integration was related to greater prospective depressive symptoms. These findings contribute to an emerging understanding of the role of the allostaticinteroceptive system in depression in adolescents by showing that the relationship between system integration and prospective depressive symptoms differs depending on adolescents’emotional attention

2026

The roles of emotional responding and regulation in adolescent friendship stability: A multimethod functional magnetic resonance imaging study
Shipkova, Bonar, Capella, Feldman, Field, Prinstein, Telzer & Lindquist
Journal of Research on Adolescence
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
This study examined longitudinal associations between early adolescents' emotional responding and use of cognitive reappraisal and the stability of their friendships with grade-mate peers. The sample consisted of 152 early adolescents (53.29% female) in the sixth and seventh grades from three rural southeastern middle schools who provided school-based peer nominations of their friendships. A stability index of adolescents' close friendships was computed from in-school peer nominations collected at two time points, approximately 1 year apart. Adolescents self-reported their levels of emotional responding, habitual use of cognitive reappraisal, and peer relationship quality during assessments. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we also examined the behavioral and neural correlates of emotional responding to negatively and positively valenced stimuli in an affective pictures task. We found that greater self-reported emotional responding predicted less close school-based friendship stability across 1 year, even controlling for adolescents' characterizations of global peer relationship quality. Self-reported reappraisal use did not predict friendship stability. However, reappraisal use interacted with neural reactivity to negative stimuli in regions of visual cortex (ventral occipitotemporal cortex) to predict friendship stability; among adolescents reporting moderate to high reappraisal use, greater neural activation in ventral occipitotemporal cortex was associated with more stable friendships across 1 year, whereas among those reporting markedly low reappraisal use, greater activation was associated with fewer stable friendships. These findings provide valuable-albeit preliminary-insights about affective predictors of friendship stability during a life stage critical to social development.

2025

Effects of a mild inflammatory challenge on cytokines and sickness behavior: A randomized controlled trial using the influenza vaccine
Jolink*, Feldman*, Antenucci, Cardenas, West, Nakamura & Muscatell
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
The influenza vaccine has reliably been associated with mild, within-person increases in inflammation. However, the field lacks rigorous experimental work comparing the effects of the influenza vaccine to a placebo control on changes in plasma inflammatory cytokines and self-reported sickness behavior. In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, 102 participants received either the influenza vaccine or saline placebo. Four cytokines were measured in plasma 24-hours following injection; participants also reported on psychosocial outcomes, specifically sickness behavior, positive/negative affect, sleep, and subjective social disconnection. All cytokines—IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, IFN-γ—were significantly increased in the influenza vaccine condition compared to placebo. None of the psychosocial outcomes differed by condition. This study fills a gap in the literature by presenting critical causal evidence that the influenza vaccine leads to elevated levels of four inflammatory cytokines, compared to placebo control. However, a more robust increase in inflammation or a larger sample size may be necessary to observe differences in self-reported sickness behavior and other psychosocial outcomes.
Increases in inflammation are associated with decreased trust of racial out-group members
Antenucci, Feldman, Jolink, West, Cardenas, Alvarez & Muscatell
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
While social group divisions occur naturally, inauspicious contexts like pathogen threat may exacerbate divides, driving in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Minimal work has examined biological underpinnings of intergroup dynamics, particularly immune changes likely to accompany pathogen threat. To address this, we administered the influenza vaccine to 44 young adult participants. Before and after receiving the vaccine, participants completed a modified affect misattribution procedure, wherein they rated the trustworthiness of racial in-group and out-group faces. Participants also provided pre- and post-vaccine blood samples which were assayed for the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). Results showed a negative association between inflammatory reactivity and ratings of out-group faces: those who experienced greater increases in IL-6 rated racial out-group faces as less trustworthy than those with less IL-6 reactivity. This work begins exploring the role of inflammation in intergroup processes and findings, while preliminary, suggest a novel biological process that is associated with intergroup perception.
Popularity, but not likability, as a risk factor for low empathy: A longitudinal examination of within- and between-person effects of peer status and empathy in adolescence
Field, Balkind, Burnell, Fox, Feldman, Nick, Telzer, Lindquist & Prinstein
Developmental Psychology
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
This study examined reciprocal relations between two dimensions of peer status, likability and popularity, and two dimensions of empathy, empathic concern and perspective taking, across adolescence. A school-based sample of 893 (M(age) = 12.60, SD = 0.62) sixth- (n = 491; 55% female) and seventh-grade (n = 402; 45% female) adolescents from three, rural, lower middle-class schools in the southeastern United States completed self-report and peer-report questionnaires annually at four timepoints. Two trivariate latent curve models with structured residuals were fit. The first model examined within- and between-person associations between popularity, likability, and empathic concern, whereas the second model examined these associations with perspective taking. Results revealed no between-person relations among the latent factors for popularity and empathic concern or perspective taking. Conversely, the latent intercept for likability was positively related to the latent intercept for each of the empathic dimensions. Within-person cross-lagged effects from Grades 6 to 10 revealed that increases in popularity were associated with later decreases in empathic concern, while increases in empathic concern were associated with later decreases in popularity. Within-person changes in popularity did not predict later changes in perspective taking, but increases in perspective taking were associated with decreases in popularity. There were positive, albeit few, predictive associations with changes in likability. Results elucidate key differences in popularity and likability as dimensions of peer status; popular youth may benefit from the flexible use of empathic processes, while likable youth exhibit a stable, enduring propensity for empathic processes.
Seeking positive connection: Is inflammation associated with anticipated and experienced shared positive affect with close versus non-close others?
West, Jolink, Feldman, Alvarez, Cardenas, Fredrickson & Muscatell
Emotion
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
Emerging evidence suggests inflammation may enhance social approach toward close others. Yet, little is known about how inflammation relates to positive affective experiences with different social targets. To address this, we examined associations between inflammation and perceptions of anticipated and experienced shared, kind-hearted positive affect (i.e., perceived positivity resonance) with close versus non-close others. Participants (N = 55; 67% female; 43% White; Mage = 20.06) provided blood samples on two consecutive days, once before and once after receiving the annual influenza vaccine, which were assayed for levels of the inflammatory marker interleukin-6. They also completed an in-lab writing task about anticipated positivity resonance in social interactions and completed eight momentary assessments of experienced positivity resonance. A divergence emerged between anticipated and experienced positivity resonance, specifically with non-close others: Higher interleukin-6 levels were associated with greater anticipated, but lower experienced, positivity resonance during interactions with non-close others. However, these effects did not survive correction for multiple comparisons and are considered preliminary. Additionally, higher levels of interleukin-6 were related to significantly greater ease imagining interacting with a close other, and a larger quantity of interactions with different close others. These findings provide preliminary evidence that associations between inflammation and positive emotions during social interactions vary as a function of anticipated versus experienced interactions, and as a function of target (close vs. non-close others). Future work is needed to test whether results replicate and generalize to older adults and those with chronically elevated inflammation.
Social contexts are associated with higher emotional awareness than non-social contexts: Evidence in a sample of people with and without major depressive disorder
Tuck, Feldman, Lindquist & Thompson
Emotion
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Growing evidence suggests that social contexts may prompt qualitatively distinct experiences of emotions than nonsocial contexts. In this study of people’s naturalistic daily emotional experiences, we examined in adults with and without major depressive disorder (MDD) whether experiencing emotions in a social context (with others) versus nonsocial context (without others) was associated with greater emotional clarity and attention to one’s emotional experience (i.e., emotional awareness). Based on evidence that social stimuli are highly salient to social species, we predicted that interactions with social others—and especially close social others—would be associated with greater emotional awareness. We furthermore expected that individuals with MDD, who tend to have diminished emotional clarity and social deficits, might experience less emotional awareness in social settings than healthy controls. Across a 2-week experience sampling study that concluded in 2019, we assessed emotional awareness when people were interacting with others (vs. not) and interacting with close (vs. nonclose) others among adults with current MDD (n = 53), remitted MDD (n = 80), and healthy controls (n = 87). As expected, attention to emotion and emotional clarity were higher in social versus nonsocial contexts and when interacting with close versus nonclose others. Contrary to expectations that these effects would be weaker among those with current MDD, the current MDD group showed enhanced emotional clarity in social versus nonsocial settings compared to the other two groups. Insofar as emotional clarity is beneficial to well-being, these findings suggest those with MDD may especially benefit from social contexts.

2024

Differential effects of social versus monetary incentives on inhibitory control under acute inflammation
Alvarez, Jolink, West, Cardenas, Feldman, Cohen & Muscatell
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
While the impact of chronic, low-grade inflammation on cognitive functioning is documented in the context of neurodegenerative disease, less is known about the association between acute increases in inflammation and cognitive functioning in daily life. This study investigated how changes in interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels were associated with performance on an inhibitory control task, the go/no-go task. We further examined whether the opportunity to earn different incentive types (social or monetary) and magnitudes (high or low) was associated with differential performance on the task, depending on IL-6 levels. Using a within-participant design, individuals completed an incentivized go/no-go task before and after receiving the annual influenza vaccine. Multilevel logistic regressions were performed on the trial-level data (Nobs = 30,528). For no-go trials, we did not find significant associations in IL-6 reactivity and changes in trial accuracy between sessions. For go trials, we found significant differences in the associations between IL-6 reactivity and changes in accuracy as a function of the incentive condition. Notably, greater IL-6 reactivity was consistently associated with fewer omission errors (i.e., greater accuracy on go trials) on high-magnitude social incentives (i.e., viewing a picture of a close-other) when compared to both low-magnitude social and high-magnitude monetary incentives. Together, these results suggest that mild fluctuations in inflammation might alter the valuation of an incentive, and possibly a shift toward devoting greater attentional resources when a large social incentive is on the line. Overall, this study sheds light on how everyday, low-grade fluctuations in inflammation may influence cognitive abilities essential for daily life and effective inhibitory control.
Emotion Granularity from Text: An Aggregate-Level Indicator of Mental Health
Vishnubhotla, Teodorescu, Feldman, Lindquist & Mohammad
Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
We are united in how emotions are central to shaping our experiences; and yet, individuals differ greatly in how we each identify, categorize, and express emotions. In psychology, variation in the ability of individuals to differentiate between emotion concepts is called emotion granularity (determined through self-reports of one's emotions). High emotion granularity has been linked with better mental and physical health; whereas low emotion granularity has been linked with maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and poor health outcomes. In this work, we propose computational measures of emotion granularity derived from temporally-ordered speaker utterances in social media (in lieu of self-reports that suffer from various biases). We then investigate the effectiveness of such text-derived measures of emotion granularity in functioning as markers of various mental health conditions (MHCs). We establish baseline measures of emotion granularity derived from textual utterances, and show that, at an aggregate level, emotion granularities are significantly lower for people self-reporting as having an MHC than for the control population. This paves the way towards a better understanding of the MHCs, and specifically the role emotions play in our well-being.
Higher interleukin-6 is associated with greater momentary social connection in close relationships in daily life
Jolink, West, Alvarez, Cardenas, Feldman, Algoe & Muscatell
Psychoneuroendocrinology
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Recent evidence has documented associations between higher levels of inflammation and social approach behaviors toward close others in laboratory-based tasks. Yet it is unknown if this translates to interactions with close others in daily life. Given that momentary experiences of social connection have both relational and health consequences, this is a critical gap in our knowledge. To address the association between inflammation and momentary social connection experiences in close relationships, 55 participants provided blood samples on two consecutive days, which were assayed for circulating levels of the inflammatory marker interleukin-6 (IL-6). After providing the first blood sample, participants received the annual influenza vaccine as a mild inflammatory challenge. Participants also reported on cognitive, affective, and behavioral indicators of social connection with a specific close other multiple times across the two study days. Results indicated that levels of IL-6 were positively associated with temporally-proximal indicators of momentary social connection with a close other. Specifically, higher levels of IL-6 were associated with greater feelings of comfort from the close other, greater desire to be near them, and higher reported relationship quality. Greater IL-6 reactivity to the vaccine was only associated with increased reported relationship quality. These data add to the existing literature suggesting that higher levels of IL-6 may motivate social approach toward a close other, extending evidence to now include momentary social connection experiences in daily life.
Proximity within real world adolescent peer networks predicts neural similarity during affective experience
Feldman*, Capella*, Dai, Bonar, Field, Lewis, Prinstein, Telzer & Lindquist
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Individuals befriend others who are similar to them. One important source of similarity in relationships is similarity in felt emotion. In the present study, we used novel methods to assess whether greater similarity in the multivoxel brain representation of affective stimuli was associated with adolescents’ proximity within real-world school-based social networks. We examined dyad-level neural similarity within a set of brain regions associated with the representation of affect including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), amygdala, insula, and temporal pole. Greater proximity was associated with greater vmPFC neural similarity during pleasant and neutral experiences. Moreover, we used unsupervised clustering on social networks to identify groups of friends and observed that individuals from the same (versus different) friend groups were more likely to have greater vmPFC neural similarity during pleasant and negative experiences. These findings suggest that similarity in the multivoxel brain representation of affect may play an important role in adolescent friendships.
The Role of Interoception in Emotion and Social Cognition
Feldman, Ma & Lindquist
Interoception: A Comprehensive Guide
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
We begin this chapter by clarifying our working definition of interoception and discussing how interoception fits within the larger picture of human brain functional evolution. We focus on the role of interoception in supporting the predictive regulation of the internal milieu, or ``allostasis,'' and situate this process within human phylogeny (evolutionary development) and ontogeny (life course development). We review evidence that interoceptive systems develop within the context of human infants' ``allostatic dependency,'' or dependency on caregivers to regulate their internal states, and overview how allostatic dependency may set the stage for the development of interoception and its role in emotion, selfhood, and social perception over the rest of the lifespan. We then review evidence that interoception supports emotional and social processing in adults. We close by discussing how the role of interoception in emotion and social cognition has implications for socioemotional health and well-being.
The neurobiology of interoception and affect
Feldman, Bliss-Moreau & Lindquist
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Scholars have argued for centuries that affective states involve interoception, or representations of the state of the body. Yet, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how signals from the body are transduced, transmitted, compressed, and integrated by the brains of humans to produce affective states. We suggest that to understand how the body contributes to affect, we first need to understand information flow through the nervous system's interoceptive pathways. We outline such a model and discuss how unique anatomical and physiological aspects of interoceptive pathways may give rise to the qualities of affective experiences in general and valence and arousal in particular. We conclude by considering implications and future directions for research on interoception, affect, emotions, and human mental experiences.

2023

Aging Bodies, Brains, and Emotions: The Physiological Hypothesis of Emotional Aging
MacCormack, Feldman, Bonar & Lindquist
Emotion Communication by the Aging Face and Body: A Multidisciplinary View
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
Longstanding evidence finds that healthy older adults tend to experience greater positivity, equanimity, and well-being in daily life. Prominent psychological theories of emotional aging tend to focus on cognitive pathways such as shifting motivations and accumulated cognitive resources (e.g., attentional control, expertise) to explain observed emotional aging effects. In this chapter, we introduce the physiological hypothesis of emotional aging (PHEA). At its core, the PHEA proposes that physiological aging contributes to emotional aging, wherein age-related changes to the peripheral body and how the brain represents and regulates the peripheral body (e.g., interoception) should result in age-related changes to emotional experience and associated socioemotional perceptions and behaviors, i.e., emotion communication. Importantly, the PHEA argues that the dynamics of physiological aging (e.g., increased dysfunction, greater afferent noise from the viscera and peripheral transmission pathways, reduced interoception) may in turn facilitate the increased importance of cognitive pathways in late life emotional outcomes and functions. As such, the PHEA provides an integrative neuroscience approach to emotional aging that highlights the importance of physiological health and aging across the body and brain while providing an interpretive framework that complements existing cognitive theories of late life emotion. This chapter introduces core arguments of the PHEA, unifies existing evidence on physiological, interoceptive, and related neural aging as relevant for emotional aging, and forecasts new directions and implications for late life socioemotional functioning and interpersonal behaviors.
Examining the Role of Emotion Differentiation on Emotion and Cardiovascular Physiological Activity During Acute Stress
Bonar, MacCormack, Feldman & Lindquist
Affective Science
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Emotion differentiation (ED) - the tendency to experience one's emotions with specificity - is a well-established predictor of adaptive responses to daily life stress. Yet, there is little research testing the role of ED in self-reported and physiological responses to an acute stressor. In the current study, we investigate the effects of negative emotion differentiation (NED) and positive emotion differentiation (PED) on participants' self-reported emotions and cardiac-mediated sympathetic nervous system reactivity (i.e., pre-ejection period) in response to a stressful task. Healthy young adults enrolled in a two-session study. At an initial session, participants completed a modified experience sampling procedure (i.e., the Day Reconstruction Method). At session 2, 195 completed the Trier Social Stress Test while cardiac impedance was acquired throughout. Linear regressions demonstrated that higher NED, but not PED, was associated with experiencing less intense self-reported negative, high arousal emotions (e.g., irritated, panicky) during the stressor (β = - .15, p < .05) although people with higher NED also exhibited greater sympathetic reactivity (β = .16, p < .05). In exploratory analyses, we tested whether the effect of NED on self-reported stress was mediated by the tendency to make internally focus (or self-focused) attributions about performance on the task but did not find a significant indirect effect (p = .085). These results both complement prior work and provide a more complex picture of the role of NED in adaptive responses to stressful life events, suggesting that people with higher NED may experience their emotions as more manageable regardless of their level of physiological arousal.
Friends in Sync? Examining the Relationship Between the Degree of Nonverbal Synchrony, Friendship Satisfaction and Support
Lin, Feldman, Tudder, Gresham, Peters & Dodell-Feder
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
Nonverbal synchrony (NVS), the degree of spontaneous coordination of movements among dyads, has been associated with important social outcomes among romantic and stranger dyads, including the degree of social affiliation. Recently, automated methods, such as Motion Energy Analysis (MEA), have been used to objectively measure NVS. In this study, we examined MEA-quantified NVS among 143 friend dyads and its association with friendship satisfaction, closeness, and support. Friend dyads engaged in two conversations about a problem one friend was experiencing and took turns generating problems. Half the dyads were randomized to a co-rumination condition, where they were given instructions that prompted co-rumination, or a natural condition, where they were prompted to speak about the problem as they naturally would. Friendship satisfaction was measured at baseline while friendship support was measured at baseline and following each conversation using self-report scales. NVS was significantly present above chance during the task, but for each conversation, levels of NVS were not (a) predicted by the degree of friendship satisfaction or support, or (b) predictive of the degree of post-conversation friendship support. Furthermore, exploratory analyses revealed that for individuals who rated their dyad partner as a friend versus a close friend, greater synchrony trended toward predicting lower friendship support during the second conversation. Overall, this study demonstrates that an automated assessment of movement was able to detect NVS among friend dyads during a problem-focused discussion, but raises questions about the role that NVS plays among friends in this context.
Interoceptive ability moderates the effect of physiological reactivity on social judgment
Feldman, MacCormack, Bonar & Lindquist
Emotion
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Social judgments—that others are kind or cruel, well intentioned, or conniving—can ease or disrupt social interactions. And yet a person's internal state can alter these judgments—a phenomenon known as affective realism. We examined the factors that contribute to, and mitigate, affective realism during a stressful interview. Using data collected between 2015 and 2019, we hypothesized and found that individuals’ ability (N = 161; 57.6% female; 57.6% European American, 13.6% African American, 13.6% Asian American, 6.4% Latinx, 6.0% biracial, and 2.8% that identified with none or 1 + of the races presented; Mage = 19.20 years) to accurately perceive their own internal sensations (i.e., heartbeats) influenced whether they attributed their own heightened stress reactions (i.e., sympathetic nervous system reactivity) to the behavior of two impassive interviewers. Participants who were poor heartbeat detectors perceived their interviewers as less helpful, polite, or professional, and more apathetic, judgmental, and aggressive when experiencing heightened levels of cardiovascular sympathetic nervous system reactivity during their interview. Being aware of one's internal state may be one pathway to reducing bias in social perceptions in circumstances where such biases may lead us astray.
The roles of inflammation, affect, and interoception in predicting social perception
Feldman, Jolink, Alvarez, Fendinger, Gaudier-Diaz, Lindquist & Muscatell
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Sickness behavior" is an orchestrated suite of symptoms that commonly occur in the context of inflammation, and is characterized by changes in affect, social experience, and behavior. However, recent evidence suggests that inflammation may not always produce the same set of sickness behavior (e.g., fatigue, anhedonia, and social withdrawal). Rather, inflammation may be linked with different behavior across contexts and/or across individuals, though research in this area is under-developed to-date. In the present study (n = 30), we evaluated the influence of affective context and individual differences in difficulty detecting bodily sensations (i.e., interoceptive difficulty) on social perception following an inflammatory challenge. Inflammation was induced using the influenza vaccine and inflammatory reactivity was operationalized as changes in circulating levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) before the vaccine and approximately 24 h later. Twenty-four hours after administration of the influenza vaccine, we manipulated affective context using a well-validated affect misattribution task in which participants made trustworthiness judgments of individuals with neutral facial expressions following the rapid presentation of "prime" images that were positive or negative in affective content. Interoceptive difficulty was measured at baseline using a validated self-report measure. Results revealed significant interactions between inflammatory reactivity to the influenza vaccine and affective context on social perception. Specifically, individuals with greater inflammatory reactivity were more biased by affective context when judging the trustworthiness of neutral faces. In addition, interoceptive difficulty and affective context interacted to predict social perception such that individuals with greater interoceptive difficulty were more biased by affective context in these judgments. In sum, we provide some of the first evidence that inflammation may amplify the saliency of affective cues during social decision making. Our findings also replicate prior work linking interoceptive ability to the use of affect-as-information during social perception, but in the novel context of inflammation.

2022

Affect and Social Judgment: The Roles of Physiological Reactivity and Interoceptive Sensitivity
Feldman, Siegel, Barrett, Quigley & Wormwood
Affective Science
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Humans imbue the objects of their perception with affective meaning, a phenomenon called affective realism. The affective realism hypothesis proposes that a brain continually predicts the meaning of sensations (e.g., identifying a sound as a siren, or a visual array as a face) in part by representing the current state of the body and the immediate physiological impact that similar sensory events have entailed in the past. However, the precise contribution of physiological activity to experiences of affective realism remains unknown. In the present study, participants' peripheral physiological activity was recorded while they made social evaluative judgments of target faces displaying neutral expressions. Target faces were shown concurrent with affective images that were suppressed from reportable awareness using continuous flash suppression. Results revealed evidence of affective realism-participants judged target faces more positively when paired with suppressed positive stimuli than suppressed negative stimuli-but this effect was significantly less pronounced among individuals higher in cardiac interoceptive sensitivity. Moreover, while some modest differences in peripheral physiological activity were observed across suppressed affective stimulus conditions, physiological reactivity to affective stimuli did not directly predict social evaluative judgments. We explore the implications of these findings with respect to both theories of emotion and theories detailing a role for interoception in experiences of first-person subjectivity.
Inflammatory reactivity to the influenza vaccine is associated with changes in automatic social behavior
Jolink, Fendinger, Alvarez, Feldman, Gaudier-Diaz & Muscatell
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Recent evidence suggests differential patterns of social behavior following an inflammatory challenge, such that increases in inflammation may not uniformly lead to social withdrawal. Indeed, increases in inflammation have been associated with enhanced self-reported motivation to approach a specific close other, and greater neural sensitivity to positive social cues. However, no known studies have examined the association between inflammation in response to an inflammatory challenge and social behavior in humans, nor has past research examined specifically how approach and withdrawal behavior may differ based on whether the target is a close other or stranger. To address this, 31 participants (ages 18-24) received the influenza vaccine to elicit a low-grade inflammatory response. The morning before and approximately 24 h after the vaccine, participants provided a blood sample and completed a computer task assessing automatic (implicit) approach and withdrawal behavior toward a social support figure and strangers. Greater increases in the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) in response to the vaccine were associated with an increase in accuracy in avoiding strangers and a decrease in accuracy in approaching them. Increases in IL-6 were also associated with a decrease in reaction time to approach a support figure, but only when controlling for baseline IL-6 levels. There were no associations between change in IL-6 and changes in self-reported motivation to engage in social behavior with either close others, or strangers. Together, these findings reveal that increases in inflammation following the influenza vaccine are associated with automatic social behavior, especially behavior suggesting avoidance of unfamiliar social targets and ease in approaching a support figure. These data add to the growing literature suggesting that the association between inflammation and social behavior includes both social withdrawal and social approach, depending on the specific target.

2021

Framework for selecting and benchmarking mobile devices in psychophysiological research
Kleckner*, Feldman*, Goodwin & Quigley
Behavior Research Methods
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Commercially available consumer electronics in (smartwatches and wearable biosensors) are increasingly enabling acquisition of peripheral physiological and physical activity data inside and outside of laboratory settings. However, there is scant literature available for selecting and assessing the suitability of these novel devices for scientific use. To overcome this limitation, the current paper offers a framework to aid researchers in choosing and evaluating wearable technologies for use in empirical research. Our seven-step framework includes: (1) identifying signals of interest; (2) characterizing intended use cases; (3) identifying study-specific pragmatic needs; (4) selecting devices for evaluation; (5) establishing an assessment procedure; (6) performing qualitative and quantitative analyses on resulting data; and, if desired, (7) conducting power analyses to determine sample size needed to more rigorously compare performance across devices. We illustrate the application of the framework by comparing electrodermal, cardiovascular, and accelerometry data from a variety of commercial wireless sensors (Affectiva Q, Empatica E3, Empatica E4, Actiwave Cardio, Shimmer) relative to a well-validated, wired MindWare laboratory system. Our evaluations are performed in two studies (N = 10, N = 11) involving psychometrically sound, standardized tasks that include physical activity and affect induction. After applying our framework to this data, we conclude that only some commercially available consumer devices for physiological measurement are capable of wirelessly measuring peripheral physiological and physical activity data of sufficient quality for scientific use cases. Thus, the framework appears to be beneficial at suggesting steps for conducting more systematic, transparent, and rigorous evaluations of mobile physiological devices prior to deployment in studies.
Narratives Shape Cognitive Representations of Immigrants and Immigration-Policy Preferences
Martinez, Feldman, Feldman & Cikara
Psychological Science
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Scholars from across the social and media sciences have issued a clarion call to address a recent resurgence in criminalized characterizations of immigrants. Do these characterizations meaningfully impact individuals' beliefs about immigrants and immigration? Across two online convenience samples (total N = 1,054 adult U.S. residents), we applied a novel analytic technique to test how different narratives-achievement, criminal, and struggle-oriented-impacted cognitive representations of German, Russian, Syrian, and Mexican immigrants and the concept of immigrants in general. All stories featured male targets. Achievement stories homogenized individual immigrant representations, whereas both criminal and struggle-oriented stories racialized them along a White/non-White axis: Germany clustered with Russia, and Syria clustered with Mexico. However, criminal stories were unique in making our most egalitarian participants' representations as differentiated as our least egalitarian participants'. Narratives about individual immigrants also generalized to update representations of nationality groups. Most important, narrative-induced representations correlated with immigration-policy preferences: Achievement narratives and corresponding homogenized representations promoted preferences for less restriction, and criminal narratives promoted preferences for more.

2020

Beginning with biology: "Aspects of cognition" exist in the service of the brain's overall function as a resource-regulator
Theriault, Coleman, Feldman, Fridman, Sennesh, Barrett & Quigley
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Abstract Citation
Copied!
—
Lieder and Griffiths rightly urge that computational cognitive models be constrained by resource usage, but they should go further. The brain's primary function is to regulate resource usage. As a consequence, resource usage should not simply select among algorithmic models of "aspects of cognition." Rather, "aspects of cognition" should be understood as existing in the service of resource management.
Context-aware experience sampling reveals the scale of variation in affective experience
Hoemann*, Khan*, Feldman, Nielson, Devlin, Dy, Barrett, Wormwood & Quigley
Scientific Reports
Abstract Citation [PDF]
Copied!
—
Emotion research typically searches for consistency and specificity in physiological activity across instances of an emotion category, such as anger or fear, yet studies to date have observed more variation than expected. In the present study, we adopt an alternative approach, searching inductively for structure within variation, both within and across participants. Following a novel, physiologically-triggered experience sampling procedure, participants’ self-reports and peripheral physiological activity were recorded when substantial changes in cardiac activity occurred in the absence of movement. Unsupervised clustering analyses revealed variability in the number and nature of patterns of physiological activity that recurred within individuals, as well as in the affect ratings and emotion labels associated with each pattern. There were also broad patterns that recurred across individuals. These findings support a constructionist account of emotion which, drawing on Darwin, proposes that emotion categories are populations of variable instances tied to situation-specific needs.

References

Alvarez, G. M., Jolink, T. A., West, T. N., Cardenas, M. N., Feldman, M. J., Cohen, J. R., & Muscatell, K. A. (2024). Differential effects of social versus monetary incentives on inhibitory control under acute inflammation. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2024.09.010
Antenucci, N. M., Feldman, M. J., Jolink, T. A., West, T. N., Cardenas, M. N., Alvarez, G. M., & Muscatell, K. A. (2025). Increases in inflammation are associated with decreased trust of racial out-group members. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2025.106242
Bonar, A. S., MacCormack, J. K., Feldman, M. J., & Lindquist, K. A. (2023). Examining the role of emotion differentiation on emotion and cardiovascular physiological activity during acute stress. Affective Science, 4(2), 317–331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00189-y
Feldman, M. J., Bliss-Moreau, E., & Lindquist, K. A. (2024). The neurobiology of interoception and affect. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.01.009
Feldman, M. J., Jolink, T. A., Alvarez, G. M., Fendinger, N. J., Gaudier-Diaz, M. M., Lindquist, K. A., & Muscatell, K. A. (2023). The roles of inflammation, affect, and interoception in predicting social perception. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 112, 246–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2023.05.011
Feldman, M. J., Ma, R., & Lindquist, Kristen A. (2024). The role of interoception in emotion and social cognition. In J. Murphy & R. Brewer (Eds.), Interoception: A comprehensive guide (pp. 125–149). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68521-7_5
Feldman, M. J., MacCormack, J. K., Bonar, A. S., & Lindquist, K. A. (2023). Interoceptive ability moderates the effect of physiological reactivity on social judgment. Emotion, 23(8), 2231–2242. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001210
Feldman, M. J., Siegel, E., Barrett, L. F., Quigley, K. S., & Wormwood, J. B. (2022). Affect and social judgment: The roles of physiological reactivity and interoceptive sensitivity. Affective Science, 3(2), 464–479. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00114-9
Feldman*, M. J., Capella*, J., Dai, J., Bonar, A. S., Field, N., Lewis, K., Prinstein, M., Telzer, E., & Lindquist, K. A. (2024). Proximity within real world adolescent peer networks predicts neural similarity during affective experience. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 19. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae072
Field, N. H., Balkind, E., Burnell, K., Fox, K. A., Feldman, M. J., Nick, E. A., Telzer, E. H., Lindquist, K. A., & Prinstein, M. J. (2025). Popularity, but not likability, as a risk factor for low empathy: A longitudinal examination of within- and between-person effects of peer status and empathy in adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 61(9), 1684–1697. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001914
Frye, N. G., Lin, Y., Feldman, M. J., Prinstein, M. J., Cohen, J. R., Telzer, E. H., & Lindquist, K. A. (in press). Emotional attention moderates the link between allostatic interoceptive network organization and depression in adolescents [Journal Article]. Affective Science.
Hoemann*, K., Khan*, Z., Feldman, M. J., Nielson, C., Devlin, M., Dy, J., Barrett, L. F., Wormwood, J. B., & Quigley, K. S. (2020). Context-aware experience sampling reveals the scale of variation in affective experience. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 12459. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69180-y
Jolink, T. A., Fendinger, N. J., Alvarez, G. M., Feldman, M. J., Gaudier-Diaz, M. M., & Muscatell, K. A. (2022). Inflammatory reactivity to the influenza vaccine is associated with changes in automatic social behavior. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 99, 339–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2021.10.019
Jolink, T. A., West, T. N., Alvarez, G. M., Cardenas, M. N., Feldman, M. J., Algoe, S. B., & Muscatell, K. A. (2024). Higher interleukin-6 is associated with greater momentary social connection in close relationships in daily life. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 164, 107020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2024.107020
Jolink*, T. A., Feldman*, M. J., Antenucci, N. M., Cardenas, M. N., West, T. N., Nakamura, Z. M., & Muscatell, K. A. (2025). Effects of a mild inflammatory challenge on cytokines and sickness behavior: A randomized controlled trial using the influenza vaccine [Journal Article]. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2025.04.018
Kleckner*, I. R., Feldman*, M. J., Goodwin, M. S., & Quigley, K. S. (2021). Framework for selecting and benchmarking mobile devices in psychophysiological research. Behavior Research Methods, 53(2), 518–535. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01438-9
Lin, L., Feldman, M. J., Tudder, A., Gresham, A. M., Peters, B. J., & Dodell-Feder, D. (2023). Friends in sync? Examining the relationship between the degree of nonverbal synchrony, friendship satisfaction and support. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 47(3), 361–384. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-023-00431-y
MacCormack, J. K., Feldman, M. J., Bonar, A. S., & Lindquist, K. A. (2023). Aging bodies, brains, and emotions: The physiological hypothesis of emotional aging [Book Chapter]. In U. Hess, R. B. Adams Jr., & R. E. E. Kleck (Eds.), Emotion communication by the aging face and body: A multidisciplinary view (p. 54–82). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009209656.004
Martinez, J. E., Feldman, L. A., Feldman, M. J., & Cikara, M. (2021). Narratives shape cognitive representations of immigrants and immigration-policy preferences. Psychological Science, 32(2), 135–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620963610
Shipkova, M., Bonar, A., Capella, J., Feldman, M. J., Field, N. H., Prinstein, M. J., Telzer, E. H., & Lindquist, K. A. (2026). The roles of emotional responding and regulation in adolescent friendship stability: A multimethod functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.70154
Theriault, J. E., Coleman, M., Feldman, M. J., Fridman, J. D., Sennesh, E., Barrett, L. F., & Quigley, K. S. (2020). Beginning with biology: "Aspects of cognition" exist in the service of the brain’s overall function as a resource-regulator. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, e26. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x19001705
Tuck, A. B., Feldman, M. J., Lindquist, K. L., & Thompson, R. J. (2025). Social contexts are associated with higher emotional awareness than non-social contexts: Evidence in a sample of people with and without major depressive disorder [Journal Article]. Emotion, 25, 633–643. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001436
Vishnubhotla, K., Teodorescu, D., Feldman, M. J., Lindquist, K., & Mohammad, S. M. (2024). Emotion granularity from text: An aggregate-level indicator of mental health [Proceedings]. Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 19168–19185. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2403.02281
West, T. N., Jolink, T. A., Feldman, M. J., Alvarez, G. M., Cardenas, M. N., Fredrickson, B. L., & Muscatell, K. A. (2025). Seeking positive connection: Is inflammation associated with anticipated and experienced shared positive affect with close versus non-close others? Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001594