Olivier Luminet

Olivier Luminet Research associate at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) Associate professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) Associate professor at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) Unit of Clinical Psychology: Emotion, Cognition, Health    Address:  Department of Psychology  Catholic University of Louvain  Place du Cardinal Mercier 10  1348 Louvain-la-Neuve  Belgium   Phone:  +32-10-47 87 01   Fax.:  +32-10-47 37 74   E-Mail:    URL:  Personal Webpage       Research domains     Representative publications

 

 

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Research domains

• Personality, helth and emotion
• Memory and emotion

 

1. Personality, health, and emotion

I look at the moderating impact of personality constructs on emotional perception, categorization and memory.

The personality dimensions that are examined are related:

• to people who have deficits in emotional identification and expression (alexithymia) and
• to people who have high abilities in emotional processing and regulation (emotional intelligence).

These questions are investigated both

• in experimental settings using explicit and implicit measures and
• in clinical populations e.g., alcohol dependence, type I diabetes, eating disorders).

 

2. Memory and emotion

My second area of research deals with emotion and memory. More specifically, I try to modelize the variables involved in the formation and maintenance of "flashbulb memories" (FBM).

FBM are are vivid, long-lasting, detailed and consistent recollections of specific details for the reception context of shocking public events (location, time, other people present, informant, ongoing activity).

• For example, you remember very well that you were working home on a sunny day when your mother called you and warned you about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

 

 

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Representative publications

Luminet, O., Bagby, R. M., & Taylor, G. J. (2001). An evaluation of the absolute and relative stability of alexithymia in patients with major depression. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 70, 254-260.

Luminet, O., Bouts, P., Delie, F., Manstead, A. S. R., & Rimé, B. (2000). Social sharing of emotion following exposure to a negatively valenced situation.Cognition and Emotion, 14, 661-688.

Luminet, O., Curci, A., Marsh, E. J., Wessel, I., Constantin, T., Gencoz, F., & Yogo, M. (2004). The Cognitive, Emotional and Social Impacts of the September 11th Attacks: Group Differences in Memory for the Reception Context and the Determinants of Flashbulb Memory. Journal of General Psychology, 131 (3), 197-224.

Luminet, O., Rimé, B., Bagby, R. M., & Taylor, G. J. (2004). A multimodal investigation of emotional responding in alexithymia. Cognition and Emotion, 18 (6), 741-766.

Luminet, O., Vermeulen, N., Demaret, C., Bagby, R. M., & Taylor, G. J. (in press). Alexithymia and levels of processing: Evidence for and overall deficit in remembering emotion words. Journal of Research in Personality.