University of Kent

Research interests

My research interests include emotions and moral judgment; emotion and self-control; and intergroup emotions.  Particularly important in my work are the emotion pairs anger versus disgust, and shame versus guilt, as well as the more general distinction between self-conscious emotions (e.g. guilt) and non-self-conscious emotion (e.g. anxiety).  I also am interested in the automaticity of emotional influences on judgment, both in general, and in comparing the automaticity of different emotion types.  Some applications of my recent work have been to: judgments of moral deviance; legal decision making; eating and dieting; and intergroup apologies.

Key Publications

Castano, E., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2006). Not quite human: Infra-humanization as a response to collective responsibility for intergroup killing.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 804-818.

Giner-Sorolla, R. (2004). Is affective material in attitudes more accessible than cognitive material?  The moderating role of attitude basis. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 761-780.

Giner-Sorolla, R. (2001).  Affectively based attitudes are not always faster: The moderating role of extremity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 27, 666-677.

Giner-Sorolla, R.(2001) Guilty pleasures and grim necessities: Immediate and deliberative affective attitudes in dilemmas of self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 208-221.