Awe in the Raw

Episode 02

Today we talk to Dr. Michelle Shiota, Lab Director and Principal Investigator in the SPLAT Lab at Arizona State University. SPLAT stands for Shiota Psychophysiology Laboratory for Effective Testing. It’s a social psychology lab that conducts research on the nature an implications of human emotion, using a multi-method approach that integrates physiological, behavioral, cognitive, narrative and questionnaire measures of emotional responding. I wanted to know if awe has any connection to the healing benefits of nature? So it would make sense that Dr. Shiota be the right person to ask! Dr. Shiota received her BA in Communications from Stanford University and her PhD in Social Personality Psychology from UC Berkeley. Her research is published in high impact journals, such as: Cognition and Emotion. Today, we discuss the physiological measures of awe and discover whether we can determine someone’s emotion from their physiology. An insightful episode about our body’s reaction to perception, the science of emotion, empathy and ultimately, all that could – or could not be – awe. Take a listen!