Neuroscience major Yavin Alwis ’20 will have an article he coauthored with psychology professor Dr. Jason Haberman published in a forthcoming issue of Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.
The article, titled “Emotional Judgments of Scenes Are Influenced by Unintentional Averaging,” examines how the perceived emotion of an individual can be unintentionally influenced by the emotional content of a surrounding crowd.
Haberman’s work is applicable to public speaking and pedagogical practices because it suggests a speaker can easily and accurately assess the average mood of an audience. For example, is there generalized confusion in the crowd? Boredom? Happiness?
Alwis joined Haberman’s lab his sophomore year and has been conducting experiments in human neuroscience and sophisticated computational modeling.
Alwis plans to take a gap year before attending medical school, and hopes to incorporate his computer science expertise into a career in medicine.