Jennifer MacCormack is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She will graduate with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Neuroscience (and additional concentration in Quantitative Psychology) in May 2020.
Jenn is a member of the Carolina Affective Science Laboratory (CASL) under Dr. Kristen Lindquist. She completed her masters thesis in 2016 on the psychological mechanisms behind feeling "hangry." In the CASL, Jenn has built expertise in peripheral psychophysiology and social affective neuroscience to investigate bodily contributions (e.g., autonomic reactivity, interoception, aging) to emotion & social cognition. This research is supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Institute on Aging.
Jenn also collaborates with Dr. Keely Muscatell (Carolina Social Neuroscience & Health Laboratory) at UNC to understand the links between metabolic processes, inflammation, and social affective experience--and more broadly how peripheral changes contribute to emotion and social cognition, such as when blocking sympathetic nervous system reactivity with propranolol. In the SNH lab, Jenn is building expertise in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and psychopharmacology.
Jenn received her B.A. in Psychology from North Carolina State University in 2013, with a focus on Lifespan Development and minors in Anthropology and Linguistics. Before that, she studied 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 cultures and history!