Emotions are elicited following unique cognitive appraisals of events. We distinguish between emotions that their underlying appraisals vary in the level of construal – emotions like joy, anger, and physical disgust involve concrete appraisals, and emotions like pride, guilt, and moral disgust.

We study how these distinct emotions influence important psychological outcomes like self-control, pro-social behavior, and dishonesty and are influenced by different emotion regulation strategies.

We study specific questions like: Do children delay gratification more after experiencing pride or joy? Do children delay gratification more after simply thinking about pride or joy? Is processing one’s emotional experience from a self-distanced perspective effective for downregulating both anger and shame? Can cheating make one proud? Does changing the colors of a disgusting image also change the disgust response?

Selected publications:

Moran, T., Bornstein, O., & Eyal, T. (in press). The level of construal involved in the elicitation of core versus moral disgust. Emotion

Shimoni, E., Berger, A., & Eyal, T. (2019). Priming pride promotes delay of gratification, Motivation and Emotion, 43, 786-802.

Shimoni, E., Asbe, M., Eyal, T., & Berger, A. (2016). Too proud to regulate: The differential effect of proud versus joy on children's ability to delay gratification. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 275-282.

Gilead, M., Katzir, M., Eyal, T., & Liberman, N. (2016). Neural correlates of self-conscious vs. basic emotions, Neuropsychologia, 81, 207-218.

Karsh, N., & Eyal, T. (2015). How the consideration of positive emotions influences persuasion: The differential effect of pride versus joy. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 28, 27-35.

Dorfman, A., Eyal, T., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2014). Proud to cooperate: The consideration of pride leads to more cooperation in a social dilemma than the consideration of joy, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 1089-1092.

Katzir, M., & Eyal, T. (2013). When stepping outside the self is not enough: Self-distancing reduces the experience of basic but not self-conscious emotions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 1089-1092.

Katzir, M., Eyal, T., Meiran, N., & Kessler, Y. (2010). Imagined positive emotions and inhibitory control: The differentiated effect of pride versus happiness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 1314-1320.