The lab consists of several undergraduate research assistants, graduate students under Paula Niedenthal's supervision, and other interested or collaborating parties.
Embodiment refers both to actual bodily states and to simulations of experience in the brain's modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection.
[3] Niedenthal employs the use of several theories of embodied cognition to explain how certain phenomena can be based specifically in such systems and bodily states.
Niedenthal believes that it is becoming increasingly essential to demonstrate the casual rules of embodiment in higher cognition.
[4] Further studies have shown that in regards to judgment, individuals embodied the relevant, discrete emotion as indicated by their facial expression.
[4] When certain emotions are experienced the resulting action is the stimulation of differing facial muscles depending on the response.
[5] In accordance with attachment orientation Niedenthal has proposed that lower level cognitive processes of perception such as the timing of the perceived offset of facial expressions of emotion influence the perception of facial expressions of different emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, and sadness.
[7] The theory consists of three claims: Emotional state as well as arousal are important in facilitating memory in that objects and events can be distinguished into high and low-arousal categories.
[8] For example, one study done by Dr. Niedenthal and Marc Setterlund in 1994 suggests that happiness and sadness have emotion-congruent effects upon selective perception.
Half of the participants were given classical music that was intended to induce a happy mood (the allegro from Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and parts of Vivaldi's Concerto in C Major), and half of the participants were given classical music that was intended to induce sad moods (Adagietto by Mahler and the adagio from the piano from the Piano Concerto No.
[10] Niedenthal et al. cite recent research that questions the hidden perceptual versus emotional factors that might account for this so-called anger superiority effect.
[11] In congruence with the findings of this research, Niedenthal et al. tested the anger superiority effect using a neural analysis of human faces in two different simulations in order to separate emotional and perceptual processes.