Expert Panelists:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Wild, PhD

• Associate Professor in Experimental Psychology & Consultant Clinical Psychologist, University of Oxford (United Kingdom)​​

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Jordyn Feingold, MD, MSCR, MAPP

• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (USA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stephanie Conn, PhD

• Psychologist (USA)

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Session Description

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Big Smile, Small Self:  Effects of Awe on Healthy Aging

Virginia Sturm, PhD​

This talk will describe a study we conducted on the emotional and social benefits of “awe walks” in healthy older adults.

More information:

• Big Smile, Small Self: Awe Walks Promote Prosocial Positive Emotions in Older Adults

• Enhanced visceromotor emotional reactivity in dyslexia and its relation to salience network connectivity

• Resting parasympathetic dysfunction predicts prosocial helping deficits in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

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Awe as a Source of Perspective and Motivation: Lessons from the Awe Experiences of Professional Scientists

Megan Powell Cuzzolino, EdD​

This talk will present findings from a recent study conducted by Dr. Cuzzolino that investigated professional scientists' experiences of awe in the context of their work. The presentation will focus on findings related to the ways that awe can serve as a source of motivation and inspiration in the face of professional challenges.

More information:

• “The Awe is In the Process”: The nature and impact of professional scientists' experiences of awe

• Scientists’ Experiences of Awe and its Relation to Learning and Discovery

• (Podcast) Can the Psychology of Awe Improve Education?

• How Can Educational Research Inform Science Communication?

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Awe and social attitudes:  Effects on generosity and helping

Claire Prade, PhD​

Emotional experiences of awe have been shown to shift people’s attention from the existing self and references and enhance a sense of connectedness to the world. These findings have led researchers to study the social function of awe. This talk will present two experiments in which we investigated the effect of awe on prosocial attitudes in young adults, by focusing on generosity and the willingness to help.

More information:

• Awe’s effects on generosity and helping

• Seeing the world in awe : intra-individual and interpersonal changes

• Awe: A positive emotion, but tinged with sadness

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BIOGRAPHIES

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Virginia Sturm, PhD

Virginia Sturm, PhD is the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation Endowed Professor at UCSF. Dr. Sturm is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and the director of the Clinical Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. After undergraduate work at Georgetown University, she received her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and completed her clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in neuropsychology. Her research focuses on identifying the neural systems that support emotion and social behavior in neurodegenerative disease and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Email: Virginia.Sturm@ucsf.edu

​Twitter: @brainsturming

Lab webpage: canlab.ucsf.edu

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Megan Powell Cuzzolino, EdD

Megan Powell Cuzzolino, Ed.D. is a researcher and educator with expertise in human development and cognition, instructional design, and science communication. Her research investigates engagement with science across the lifespan, including the role of awe in scientific learning and discovery. She is also an educational consultant who provides instructional design support to university faculty, including strategies for making the most of remote learning.

She was a 2015-2017 fellow with Sinai and Synapses, an organization that equips scientists, clergy and dedicated laypeople with knowledge and skills to become role models, ambassadors and activists for grappling with the biggest and most important questions we face. She received her doctorate in human development and education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2019.

Email: mmp240@mail.harvard.edu

Twitter: @Meganpowcuzz

LinkedIn

 

Claire Prade, PhD

Claire Prade, PhD, is a researcher working at the Center for the psychology of thinking, language, and emotion at the university of Aix-Marseille (France). Her major research interest is the emotion of awe and the thoughts and behaviors this particular emotion induces. She also teaches psychology of emotions, intelligence, and individual differences to university students. Additionally, she’s a psychologist specializing in cognitive and behavioral therapies.

Email: claire.prade@univ-amu.fr

Website: https://claireprade.academia.edu/

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Jennifer Wild, PhD

Dr Jennifer Wild is a consultant clinical psychologist, associate professor and NIHR Oxford BRC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her area of expertise is in developing and evaluating evidence-based interventions to prevent stress-related psychopathology in emergency responders. Dr Wild has worked in an advisory role to the Cabinet Office on best practice for developing preventative interventions for emergency responders. Dr Wild has over 70 publications, including book chapters, and a recently published popular science book on resilience called Be Extraordinary. Dr Wild regularly appears in the media giving evidence-based advice for trauma-related mental health problems.

Email: jennifer.wild@psy.ox.ac.uk

Twitter: @DrJenWild

Pre-incident training to build resilience in first responders: Recommendations on what to and what not to do

www.shaperecovery.com

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Jordyn Feingold, MAPP

Jordyn Feingold, MAPP is a positive psychology practitioner and medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, working toward her combined MD/ Master’s of Science in Clinical Research. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania for her undergraduate studies and her Master's of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP). She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Establishing Clinician Well-being and Resilience. Jordyn has spent years developing and implementing evidence-based well-being and resilience trainings for physicians, trainees, and medical students. She teaches a Positive Medicine elective course open to students and employees at Mount Sinai, an online course for health care professionals called Thrive-Rx, and lectures around the world on the topic of Positive Medicine.

Thrive-RX

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Stephanie M. Conn, PhD

Dr. Stephanie Conn is a former police officer, as well as the daughter and wife of police officers, and currently works as a Licensed Psychologist in private practice, specializing in police stress, trauma, work-life balance, coping, and resilience. She supports first responder agencies with CISM, peer support, and mental health training. She has 22 years of experience working in the first responder field. She has presented widely to emergency responders, sharing wisdom gained from her police experience, her research, and her therapy practice. She is the author of Increasing Resilience in Police and Emergency Personnel

Email: firstresponderpsych@gmail.com

Twitter: @PoliceResilienc

LinkedIn

Facebook

Read more: 

• Increasing Resilience in Police and Emergency Personnel (book)

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