Simone Schnall
Simone Schnall is the Director of the Cambridge Body, Mind, and Behaviour Laboratory and Fellow of Jesus College. By combining insights and methods from social psychology and cognitive science her research explores how thoughts and feelings interact. She aims to understand how people make judgments and decisions about other people, and about physical properties of the world. For example, Schnall's research has examined the role of bodily influences in the context of, first, moral judgments and behaviours, and second, perceptions of the spatial environment.
Funding for Schnall’s research has been provided by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the National Science Foundation (USA), National Institute of Mental Health (USA), and private foundations. Schnall previously served as Associate Editor for Social Psychological and Personality Science and is a Consulting Editor for Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Current research topics include judgments and decisions in moral and legal contexts, perceptions of the physical environment, and risky behaviours in finance (e.g., risk management in banks). In general the work seeks to understand why people often think and behave in seemingly surprising ways, and how to capitalise on insights from behavioural science to encourage adaptive choices in everyday life.
Primary Interests:
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Ethics and Morality
- Helping, Prosocial Behavior
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
- Neuroscience, Psychophysiology
- Nonverbal Behavior
- Social Cognition
Research Group or Laboratory:
Note from the Network: The holder of this profile has certified having all necessary rights, licenses, and authorization to post the files listed below. Visitors are welcome to copy or use any files for noncommercial or journalistic purposes provided they credit the profile holder and cite this page as the source.
Image Gallery
Video Gallery
How Your Bodily State Affects Your Perception
Select video to watch
-
13:32 How Your Bodily State Affects Your Perception
Length: 13:32
-
3:48 Transcendence Through Art: Connecting With Higher Values
Length: 3:48
A brief video produced by the Templeton Religion Trust in 2024
-
14:39 Beauty, Brains, and the To-Do List
Length: 14:39
An invited lecture given in 2025 and hosted by the John Templeton Foundation
-
6:56 Social Psychology and Morality
Length: 6:56
A 2025 interview by Closer to the Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn (Closer To Truth is a broadcast and digital media not-for-profit organization and TV series)
-
2:26 Measuring the Effect of Aesthetic Experience
Length: 2:26
-
7:48 Neuroaesthetics: How the Brain Explains Art
Length: 7:48
-
7:39 How Does Art Affect Perception, Cognition, Emotion?
Length: 7:39
-
8:05 Aesthetic Cognitivism: Intellectual Foundations
Length: 8:05
-
5:00 Co-Evolution of Art and Religion
Length: 5:00
-
46:29 Emotions, Intuitions, and Morality
Length: 46:29
Additional Videos
Books:
Journal Articles:
- Baer, T., & Schnall, S. (2021). Quantifying the costs of decision fatigue: Suboptimal risk decisions in finance. Royal Society Open Science, 8, 201059.
- Centerbar, D. B., Schnall, S., Clore, G. L., & Garvin, E. (2008). Affective incoherence: When affective concepts and embodied reactions clash. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 560-578.
- Henderson, R. K., & Schnall, S. (2021). Disease and disapproval: COVID-19 concern is related to greater moral condemnation. Evolutionary Psychology, 19(2).
- Henderson, R. K., & Schnall, S. (2021). Social threat indirectly increases moral condemnation via thwarting fundamental social needs. Scientific Reports, 11, 21709.
- Karg, S. T., Lim, M., & Schnall, S. (2022). Followers forever: Prior commitment predicts post-scandal support of a social media celebrity. Social Psychological Bulletin, 17, 1-26.
- Rathje, S., Shariff, A., & Schnall, S. (2023). Ideology trumps self-interest: Continued support for a political leader despite disappointing tax returns. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 33(3), 479-496.
- Schnall, S. (2011). Clean, proper and tidy are more than the absence of dirty, disgusting and wrong. Emotion Review, 3(3), 264-266.
- Schnall, S. (2005). The pragmatics of emotion language. Psychological Inquiry, 16, 28-31.
- Schnall, S., Abrahamson, A., & Laird, J. D. (2002). Premenstrual syndrome and misattribution: A self-perception, individual differences perspective. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 214-227.
- Schnall, S., Benton, J., & Harvey, S. (2008). With a clean conscience: Cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgments. Psychological Science, 19, 1219-1222.
- Schnall S., & Cannon, P. R. (2012). The clean conscience at work: Emotions, intuitions and morality. Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, 9, 295-315.
- Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G. L., & Jordan, A. H. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1096-1109.
- Schnall, S., Harber, K. D., Stefanucci, J., & Proffitt, D. R. (2008). Social support and the perception of geographical slant. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1246-1255.
- Schnall, S., Jaswal, V. K., & Rowe, C. (2008). A hidden cost of happiness in children. Developmental Science, 11, F25-F30.
- Schnall, S., & Laird, J. D. (2007). Facing fear: Expression of fear facilitates processing of emotional information. Social Behavior and Personality, 35, 513-524.
- Schnall, S., & Laird, J. D. (2003). Keep smiling: Enduring effects of facial expressions and postures on emotional experience and memory. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 787-797.
- Schnall, S., & Roper, J. (2011). Elevation puts moral values into action. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(3), 373-378.
- Schnall, S., Roper, J., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2010). Elevation leads to altruistic behavior. Psychological Science, 21, 315-320.
- Schnall, S., Zadra, J., & Proffitt, D. R. (2010). Direct evidence for the economy of action: Glucose and the perception of geographical slant. Perception, 39, 464-482.
Other Publications:
- Clore, G. L., & Schnall, S. (2008). Affective coherence: Affect as embodied evidence in attitude, advertising and art. In G. R. Semin & E. R. Smith (Eds.), Embodied grounding: Social, cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches (pp. 211-236). Cambridge University Press.
- Clore, G. L., & Schnall, S. (2005). The influence of affect on attitude. In D. Albarracin & B. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of attitudes and attitude change: Basic principles (pp. 437-490). Erlbaum.
- Huntsinger, J. R., & Schnall, S. (2013). Emotion/cognition interactions. In D. Reisberg, (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology (pp. 571-584). Oxford University Press.
- Schnall, S. (2011). Embodiment in affective space: Social influences on spatial perception. In A. Maas, & T. Schubert (Eds.), Spatial dimensions of social thought (pp.129-152). De Gruyter.
- Schnall, S. (2010). Affect, mood and emotions. In B. McGaw, E. Baker & P. P. Peterson (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education (3rd ed., vol. 6, pp. 544-548). Elsevier.
Simone Schnall
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology
University of Cambridge
Free School Lane
Cambridge CB2 3RQ
United Kingdom
- Phone: +44 (0) 1223 334 529
- Fax: +44 (0) 1223 334 550
