Dr. Jennifer MacCormack is an Assistant Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Virginia and Principal Investigator of the Virginia Affect and Interoception Laboratory. She studies the pathways and conditions by which bodily states and interoception, via the brain, contribute to affect, sociality, and behavior across the lifespan. Her work unites theories from affective science, interoceptive science, and lifespan development with methods from experimental social psychology, psychophysiology, psychoneuroimmunology, psychopharmacology, and human neuroimaging.
From 2020-2022, Jenn completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry’s Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine T32 program, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Her mentorship team included Dr. Peter Gianaros, Dr. Anna Marsland, and Dr. Rebecca Reed. There, Jenn deepened her expertise in brain-body connections, particularly in the context of stress and aging. The post-doc also provided training in health psychology and health neuroscience, immunometabolic processes, and lifespan epidemiological approaches to cardiovascular disease risk.
In May 2020, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Neuroscience (and additional concentration in Quantitative Psychology). There, Jenn worked with Dr. Kristen Lindquist and Dr. Keely Muscatell to investigate physiological, interoceptive, and neural contributions to emotion, stress, & social cognition across adulthood, with some of this work supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Institute on Aging.
Jenn received her B.A. in Psychology from North Carolina State University in 2013, with additional concentrations in Anthropology and Linguistics. Before that, she studied modern and medieval Welsh language and literature at Bangor University in North Wales, UK for four years. In another life, Jenn would have been an anthropologist investigating differences in mind-body beliefs across cultural and historical contexts.