Research

How is it possible that beliefs influence our emotions and behavior, even if we are not aware of them? I first became interested in this question during my masters in linguistics and the educational sciences. However, I also realized that to fully understand the processes involved I would need to know more about the way representations are encoded in the brain. That is why a few years ago I went back to university to study psychology, neuroscience an philosophy. I wanted and still want to work on an account of intelligent behavior that not only makes sense to researchers from various disciplines, but also to for instance clinical psychologists and their patients. 

In my internship report (partly in Dutch) I explained how it is possible that aging men and women can develop sexual problems when their testosterone gets too low. For my master thesis in psychology, which I completed in 2021, I examined the possibility that testosterone levels are reflected in emotionality as well as the number of hairs a person has on the middle phalanges of their fingers. A year later I gave my first public presentation about the reiteration model arguing that only emotional creatures can be rational.