Methods in Social Neuroscience

Eddie Harmon-Jones, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His research focuses on emotions and motivations, their implications for social and cognitive processes and behaviors, and their underlying neural circuits. He is a recipient of the Award for Distinguished Early Career Contribution to Psychophysiology from the Society for Psychophysiological Research. Dr. Harmon-Jones has served as an associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and is currently an associate editor of Psychological Science and Emotion.Jennifer S. Beer, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Psychology and a faculty member in the Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research adopts lesion and functional magnetic resonance imaging methodologies to examine self-regulation of social behavior. Dr. Beer serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Frontiers in Neuroscience, Social Cognition, Emotion, and Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience. Additionally, she has provided service to the field of social neuroscience as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation (United States), the Economic and Social Research Council (United Kingdom), and the VENI Innovational Research Incentive Scheme (The Netherlands), and as a course instructor for training institutes in the United States and Europe.

Straightforward and practical, this is the first book to provide detailed guidance for using neurobiological methods in the study of human social behavior, personality, and affect. Each chapter clearly introduces the method at hand, provides examples of the method's applications, discusses its strengths and limitations, and reviews concrete experimental design considerations. Written by acknowledged experts, chapters cover neuroimaging techniques, genetic measurement, hormonal methods, lesion studies, startle eyeblink responses, facial electromyography, autonomic nervous system responses, and modeling based on neural networks.

1. Introduction to Social and Personality Neuroscience Methods, Eddie Harmon-Jones and Jennifer S. Beer