While many research labs at ASU study distant galaxies or complex mathematical equations, the Shiota Psychophysiology Laboratory for Affective Testing takes a more human approach: the SPLAT lab studies human emotions.
“In a broader sense, our focus is on studying the implication of human emotion,” ASU Social Psychology professor and Lab Director Michelle Shiota said. “One of our more recent studies was analyzing how different positive emotions influence the way we process details of information on other people.”
One of the lab’s recent projects was studying positive emotions and how they affect a human’s decision making. For the most part, Shiota said positive emotions make people less skeptical. She arrived at these results by getting subjects to focus on moments in their lives that elicited certain positive emotions, and then showing them a proposed argument on making senior exams a mandatory process to graduate.
“When they were given 10 arguments, even if there were weak arguments, they were more willing to accept all the arguments,” Shiota said.
Shiota noted one exception to her findings. Unlike most positive emotions such as joy or excitement, awe increased skepticism in subjects.
“When a person was in awe, they were more skeptical and analyzed the proposal closer than when in other positive emotional states,” she said.
Beyond their most recent research, the SPLAT lab has a goal of analyzing emotion and its importance to human well-being.
“I would say emotions are valuable,” Shiota said. “Sometimes people talk about emotions as things we should get rid of to help our lives, but they’re a part of our evolutionary heritage. At some point in our history, emotions helped us in crucial moments of survival. How do we find food, a mate, offspring, fight off predators? How do we keep ourselves healthy? These are all issues emotions helped us answer.”
One of the clearest examples of this is the fight or flight mechanism.
“Take fear for example: If you’re afraid of spiders, there’s a reason for that,” Shiota said. “For ancient humans, spiders could kill you. Snakes and spiders are a couple prototypical fear inhibitors. Your body reacts very quickly as it gets ready to escape. That doesn’t require logic. It’s a way of saying ‘spider bad, get away’. It’s very instinctive.”
Despite the crucial role emotions play in most humans' lives, Shiota said people still have the conception that separating emotions from the decision process is a more effective way to live.
Alexander Danvers, a graduate student who has been with the lab for six years, said this isn’t the case.
“I think, in part it’s because people tend to think about negative emotions more when they think about emotions — they think about things like anxiety,” Danvers said. “There are times where anxiety can overwhelm you. There’s also this rationalist position that people should be hard-headed. But people should have an understanding on how things feel and how one feeling leads to another. It just is important for having a successful life and being able to navigate the world.”
What differentiates the SPLAT lab from other research endeavors is its study focus. With such a human emphasis, the lab’s studies consistently leave researchers with more questions.
“People are very cool to study,” Claire Yee, the manager of the SPLAT lab said. “Everybody’s so different. Something we love and hate about research is that everybody is so different and there are always so many different contexts. We study emotions and relationships and the different ways they affect people. And I feel like every study we run always leads to more questions.”
Reach the reporter at Emmillma@asu.edu or follow @Millmania1 on Twitter.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
