Linda Isbell | Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Feldman-Vorwerk Family Professor in Social Psychology

PhD, 1999, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

MA, 1995, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

BA, 1993, Stony Brook University

Tobin 630

413-545-5960

lisbell@umass.edu

Office Hours:

By Apppointment, please email to schedule

Laboratory Website:

Affect and Social Cognition Lab

Research Area(s):

Social Psychology

Center and Institute Affilitation:

Center for Research on Families

Tabs

Research

Current Research Interests

Affect and Social Cognition

Feelings play a ubiquitous role in our everyday lives and have a significant influence on everything from how satisfied we are to how we perceive stimuli in the world around us. Given this, it is not surprising that feelings influence many significant real-world judgments, including diagnoses of cancer, evaluations of job applicants, and voting decisions. A fundamental assumption in my work is that affective feelings convey valuable information that guides individuals’ thoughts, judgments, and actions. My work embraces the notion that affect and cognition are necessary allies that work in tandem to produce adaptive responses to the world. My research aims to better understand the ways in which affect influences ordinary, everyday information processing and judgment across a number of important social psychological and real-world domains. Much of my research investigates the impact of affective experiences on how individuals seek out, process, and evaluate information about hypothetical political candidates, job applicants, ordinary people, stereotyped others, and the self. I am currently applying research on affect and information processing to understand how affect impacts medical decision-making by health care providers when treating individuals afflicted with mental health and substance use disorders. By relying on theory and research in social cognition, I identify and explore the underlying social cognitive processes that account for the different influences of affect on cognition. A list of publications relevant to this primary line of research, as well as to some secondary lines of work, can be found here.

Research on Teaching

My experience teaching both large lecture courses of up to almost 500 students as well as small seminars of only 20 students has consistently revealed that a very large percentage of students learn best by doing and experiencing. For this reason, I develop innovative active-learning classroom activities and explore their impact on student mastery of course material (e.g., Isbell & Tyler, 2003, 2005; Isbell, Tyler, & Burns, 2007). I have found that learning experiences that link classroom material to the real world in powerful, concrete, and meaningful ways enhance student learning. One significant effort to do this resulted in a newly designed, highly experiential and interactive course in political psychology, described in Isbell (2003). In future research, I intend to explore the extent to which such learning environments lead to relatively greater longterm retention of course material compared to more traditional learning environments. I have also been working to find ways to reduce the feelings of distance, anonymity, and disconnection that many students feel in large lecture classes. These experiences are likely to be most problematic for students who are struggling with course material. My research with Nicole Gilbert-Cote (Isbell & Gilbert-Cote, 2009) demonstrates the efficacy of a simple and efficient intervention to improve these students’ grades. A list of publications relevant to my research on teaching can be found here.

Teaching

Psych 241H: Honors Research Methods (Undergraduate)

Psych 360: Social Psychology (Undergraduate)

Psych 391: Political Psychology Seminar (Undergraduate)

Psych 391: Mental Illness and Stigma Seminar (Undergraduate)

Psych 660: Social Psychology (Graduate)

Psych 762: Social Cognition (Graduate)

FFYS: Stigma and Mental Illness Freshman Seminar

Publications

NOTICE: The following linked articles have been password protected in accordance with current web publishing copyright laws. To obtain a copy of the document password send an email to the following address (L.M.Isbell.publications@gmail.com)—the password will be sent to you. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Isbell, L.M., Rovenpor, D., & Lair, E.C. (in press). The impact of negative emotions on self-concept abstraction depends on accessible cognitive scope. Emotion.

Isbell, L.M., Lair, E.C., & Rovenpor, D. (2016). The impact of affect on out-group judgments depends on dominant information processing styles: Evidence from incidental and integral affect paradigms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42, 485-497.

Huntsinger, J.R., Isbell, L.M., & Clore, G.L. (2014). The affective control of thought: Malleable, not fixed. Psychological Review, 121, 600-618.

Hunsinger, M., Livingston, D., & Isbell, L.M. (2014). Spirituality and intergroup harmony: The relationship between meditation and prejudice. Mindfulness, 5, 139-144.

Hunsinger, Livingston, D., & Isbell, L.M. (2013). The impact of loving-kindness meditation on affective learning and cognitive control. Mindfulness, 4, 275-280.[ get article]

Isbell, L.M., & Lair, E.C. (2013). Moods, emotions, and evaluations as information. In D. Carlston (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Social Cognition (pp. 435 - 462), New York: Oxford University Press.[ get article]

Isbell, L.M., Lair, E.C., & Rovenpor, D.R. (2013). Affect-as-Information about processing styles: A cognitive malleability approach. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 93-114. [ get article]

Isbell, L.M., McCabe, J., Burns, K.C., & Lair, E.C. (2013). Who am I?: The influence of affect on the working self-concept. Cognition and Emotion, 27, 1073-1090. [ get article]

Isbell, L.M. (2012). The emotional citizen: How feelings drive political preferences and behavior. Association for Psychological Science (APS) Observer, 25(8), 13, 15-16. [ get article]

Hunsinger, M., Isbell, L.M., & Clore, G.L. (2012). Sometimes happy people focus on the trees and sad people focus on the forest: Context dependent effects of mood in impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 220-232. [get article]

Isbell, L.M. (2010). What is the relationship between affect and information processing styles? This and other global and local questions inspired by GLOMOsys. Psychological Inquiry, 20, 225-232. [get article]

Parker, M.T., & Isbell, L.M. (2010). How I vote depends on how I feel: The differential impact of anger and fear on political information processing. Psychological Science, 4, 548-550. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., Gilbert Cote, N. (2009). Connecting with struggling students to improve performance in large classes. Teaching in Psychology, 36, 185-188. [get article]

Burns, K.C., Isbell, L.M., & Tyler, J.M. (2008). Suppressing emotions toward stereotyped targets: The impact on willingness to engage in contact. Social Cognition, 26, 276-287. [get article]

Gasper, K. & Isbell, L.M. (2007). Feeling, searching, and preparing: How affective states alter information seeking. In K.D. Vohs, R. Baumeister, & G. Loweinstein (Eds.) Do emotions help or hurt decision making? (pp. 93-116). New York: Russell Sage Publications.

Isbell, L.M., Tyler, J.M., & Burns, K.C. (2007). An activity to teach students about schematic processing. Teaching in Psychology, 34, 241-244. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., & Burns, K.C. (2007). Affect. In R.F. Baumeister and K.D. Vohs (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, 1, 12-13. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Burns, K.C., & Isbell, L.M. (2007). Promoting malleability is not one size fits all: Priming implicit theories of intelligence as a function of self-theories. Self and Identity, 6, 51-63. [get article]

Adaval, R., Isbell, L.M., & Wyer, R.S. (2007). The impact of pictures on narrative- and list-based impression formation: A process interference model. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 352-364. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., Tyler, J.M., & Delorenzo, A. (2007). Guilty or innocent?: Womn’s reliance on inadmissible evidence in a simulated rape case. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37, 717-739. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., Ottati, V.C., & Burns, K.C. (2006). Affect and politics: Effects on judgment, processing, and information seeking. In D. Redlawsk (Ed.) Feeling Politics, Palgrave Publishing Company, pp. 57-86.

Isbell, L.M., Burns, K.C., & Haar, T. (2005). The role of affect on the search for global and specific target information. Social Cognition, 6, 529-552. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., Swedish, K., & Gazan, D.B. (2005). Who says it’s sexual harassment?: The effects of gender and likelihood to sexually harass on legal judgments of sexual harassment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 745-772. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., & Tyler, J.M. (2005). Using students' personal ads to teach about interpersonal attraction and intimate relationships. Teaching of Psychology, 32, 169-171. [get article]

Isbell, L.M. (2004). Not all happy people are lazy or stupid: Evidence of systematic processing in happy moods. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 341-349. [get article]

Isbell, L.M. (2003). Teaching and undergraduate course in political psychology. Teaching in Psychology, 30, 148-153. [get article]

Isbell, L.M. & Tyler, J.M. (2003). Teaching students about in-group favoritism and the minimal groups paradigm. Teaching of Psychology, 30, 127-130. [get article]

Greenwood, D. & Isbell, L.M. (2002). Ambivalent sexism and the dumb blonde: Men’s and women’s reactions to sexist jokes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 341-350. [get article]

Isbell, L.M., & Ottati, V.C. (2002). The emotional voter: Effects of episodic affective reactions on candidate evaluation. In Ottati et al. (Eds) Developments in political psychology (pp. 55-74). New York: Plenum Publishing Company.

Clore, G.L., & Isbell, L.M. (2001). Emotions as virtue and vice. In J.H. Kuklinski (Ed.), Citizens and politics: Perspectives from political psychology (pp. 103-126). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Clore, G.L., Wyer, R.S., Dienes, B., Gasper, K., Gohm., C., & Isbell, L.M. (2001). Affective feelings as feedback: Some cognitive consequences. In L.L. Martin & G.L. Clore (Eds.). Theories of mood and cognition: A user’s guidebook (pp. 27-62). Mahway, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Isbell, L.M. & Wyer, R.S. (1999). Correcting for mood-induced bias in the evaluation of political candidates: The roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 237-249. [get article]

Wyer, R.S., Clore, G.L., & Isbell, L.M. (1999). Affect and information processing. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. San Diego, California: Academic Press.

Isbell, L.M., Smith, H., & Wyer, R.S. (1998). Consequences of attempts to disregard social information. In. J.M. Golding and C.M. MacLeod (Eds.) Intentional forgetting: Interdisciplinary approaches. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Isbell, L.M. & Wyer, R.S. (1998). Relying on affect to inform political judgments: Affect is information. The political psychologist, 3, 9-12.

Ottati, V.C. & Isbell, L.M. (1996). Effects of mood during exposure to target information on subsequently reported judgments: An on-line model of misattribution and correction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 39-53. [get article]

Gohm, C.L., Isbell, L.M., & Wyer, R.S. (1995). Some thoughts about thinking. In R.S. Wyer (Ed.) Advances in social cognition, Volume IX. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Curriculum Vitae

isbell_cv_january_2018.pdf

Biography

Linda M. Isbell, PhD is a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1993) and her MA (1995) and PhD (1999) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the UMass faculty in 1999. Dr. Isbell’s research primarily examines the interaction between affect and cognition and focuses extensively on the impact of affective experiences on social cognitive processes.

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