Dr. Maria Gendron

Biography

Maria Gendron is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University, where she conducts research on the intricate roles that emotions play in psychological science. She obtained her Ph.D. from Boston College in 2013. Her work is focused on how emotional experiences influence our perception of the world, drive behavior, and shape critical human relationships, thus impacting health and well-being. Gendron's research examines the diversity of emotions as they manifest across various cultures and contexts, and she is particularly interested in the dynamic influences of social, cognitive, and cultural processes on emotional experience and perception. Her research program is based on the premise that emotional phenomena arise from multiple, interacting, domain-general systems that operate within a conceptual and semantic framework. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, she draws from core concepts in social and cultural psychology as well as affective neuroscience, utilizing methods that range from standard laboratory experiments to ambulatory data collection and cross-cultural fieldwork.

Research Interests