DOCTORATS HONORIS CAUSA PSY/IPSY

Conférences le mardi 8 avril de 15h à 17h30

Empirically Resolving Controversies in Clinical Psychology

Professeur Richard J. McNally
Most of my scientific work has concerned anxiety and related disorders. Early research involving Pavlovian fear conditioning experiments tested the preparedness theory of phobias, which holds that natural selection has rendered us especially vulnerable to developing intense fears of stimuli that threatened our distant ancestors. In subsequent experimental psychopathology research, I adapted paradigms from cognitive science to test hypotheses about mechanisms that figure in the etiology and maintenance of panic disorder, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These methods, in turn, also helped resolve the intense controversy concerning reports of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). A second controversy concerns the call for trigger warnings in academia. The insistence that professors warn students of potentially distressing material arises from the worry that many students struggle with memories of trauma. Our research group has done experiments testing whether trigger warnings help (or harm) their intended beneficiaries. Finally, I will discuss a relatively new approach to conceptualizing psychopathology that differs dramatically from the categorical model that has underwritten our diagnostic systems. Pioneered by Dutch psychometricians, network psychometrics is controversial among traditional clinical psychologists, but it shows promise as illustrated by studies by my research group among others.

Communicating with written words: Cognitive, neural and historical bases

Professeure Brenda Rapp 
Written language is arguably the greatest of human inventions, allowing for the effective communication of knowledge across time and space. Our world and lives would be unrecognizable without the preservation and accumulation of knowledge that written language (reading and writing) has made possible. Furthermore, written language pervades daily lives across the globe as never before in human history, with the expansion of literacy and the rise of electronic communication such as e-mail and texting. This talk will review key historical, neural and cognitive aspects of written language. It will begin with the origins of written language and the key similarities and differences across different orthographic systems. With regard to the brain bases of written communication, written language is unlike other complex skills (e.g., spoken language, vision and navigation) whose brain development is exquisitely controlled by the genetic code. Because written language processing is so evolutionarily recent there has been no time for it to enter the human genome. Therefore, its study provides an opportunity to understand the neuroplastic properties that allow the brain to instantiate complex novel skills. Finally, in terms of cognitive processing, while it is clear that written language builds upon basic skills such as spoken language, object recognition and fine-motor functions, a fundamental question for researchers has been to understand the extent to which reading and writing are dependent upon or autonomous from these evolutionarily older skills. This talk will review key psycholinguistic, neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence that has advanced our understanding of these issues.

A cognitive-ecological model of social cognition 

Professeur Pr Christian Unkelbach 
Social psychology investigates the interaction of individuals with their social environment. There is a wide array of models and theories for this interaction. However, theories and models of the social environment per se are scarce (see Reiss, 2008). I will present a general model regarding two broad claims about what we call people’s evaluative ecology: For most people most of the time, positive information is more frequent than negative information. Second, negative information is more diverse than positive information. I will first present evidence for these broad claims. Then, I will show how these two properties, in interaction with well-established cognitive principles, have broad explanatory potential for almost all domains of social cognition: person perception, intergroup biases, stereotyping, and evaluations in general. I will close with a discussion of the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of the presented cognitive-ecological model.

Séance académique le mardi 8 avril à 18h

Richard J. McNally Présenté par les professeur·e·s Alexandre Heeren et Céline Douilliez.

Richard J. McNally est professeur à l’Université de Harvard aux États-Unis. Ses recherches portent sur la psychopathologie cognitive de l'anxiété et des troubles associés. Il est considéré comme l’un des pionniers dans l’étude expérimentale des processus cognitifs impliqués dans ces troubles. Ses recherches récentes traitent également de questions liées à la conceptualisation des troubles psychologiques et à des enjeux de liberté académique. Il a publié plus de 500 articles dans des revues internationales à comité de lecture de premier ordre et a reçu de nombreux prix et récompenses pour son travail scientifique.https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/richard-j-mcnally

Richard J. McNally is a full professor at Harvard University, USA, where he has established himself as a leading expert in the field of cognitive psychopathology, particularly concerning anxiety and stress-related disorders. As a pioneer in the experimental study of the cognitive processes tied to these disorders, he has made significant contributions that have advanced our understanding of mental health. Recently, his research has also explored the conceptualization of mental disorders and issues related to academic freedom. He has published over 500 articles in leading international peer-reviewed journals, and has garnered numerous awards and honors for his contributions..

Brenda Rapp Présentée par les professeur·e·s Gilles Vannuscorps et Solène Hameau

Brenda Rapp est professeure à l’Université Johns Hopkins aux Etats-Unis. Ses recherches ont grandement contribué à élucider des bases cognitives et neuronales du traitement des mots écrit, et à faire progresser la compréhension, le diagnostic et les interventions thérapeutiques pour les personnes souffrant de troubles cognitifs induits par un trouble neurodéveloppemental, un accident vasculaire cérébral ou une maladie neurodégénérative.
https://cogsci.jhu.edu/directory/brenda-rapp/

Brenda Rapp is a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. Her research has contributed greatly to elucidating the cognitive and neural bases of written word processing, and to advancing understanding, diagnosis and therapeutic interventions for people suffering from cognitive disorders induced by neurodevelopmental disorders, stroke or neurodegenerative disease.
 

Christian Unkelbach Présenté par les professeurs Olivier Corneille et Karl-Andrew Woltin

Christian Unkelbach est professeur et directeur du Social Cognition Center à l’Université de Cologne, en Allemagne. Ses recherches portent sur la cognition sociale et la métacognition, explorant comment les individus acquièrent des attitudes, forment des jugements de vérité, et représentent mentalement des personnes et des groupes. Ses travaux et ceux de ses doctorants ont reçu plusieurs prix du meilleur article. Il est actuellement éditeur de Social Psychological and Personality Science.
https://soccco.uni-koeln.de/christian-unkelbach

Christian Unkelbach is a professor and Chair of the Social Cognition Center at the University of Cologne, Germany. His research focuses on social cognition and metacognition, exploring how people acquire attitudes, form truth judgments, and represent individuals and groups. His work and that of his PhD students have received multiple best paper awards. He is currently Editor of Social Psychological and Personality Science.

>L'album photos de la cérémonie

Le film de la cérémonie
 

PSP-IPSY Doctorats Honoris Causa and Anniversaries

>Program

The Faculty and the IPSY Institute are organizing an Honorary Doctorate ceremony (DHC)
 on December 5th, 2019.

PSP and IPSY will award the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to three scientific personalities with exemplary academic trajectories, in recognition of the scientific and societal significance of their contributions to psychology and educational sciences:

Watch the ceremony

Introduction by Professors Mauro Pesenti and Stephan Van den Broucke

Professor Cynthia Coburn's presentation

Professor Naomi Ellemers' presentation : (coming soon)
The presentation by Professor James Gross

	Prof. Cynthia Coburn, Northwestern University (USA) Visit her homepage. Policy Implementation: The intersection of learning and power The last quarter century has witnessed an upsurge in policy making related to instruction in the United States, Europe, and beyond. However, new policy can only provide a window of opportunity for change. The degree to which policy fosters improved teaching and increased student learning depends upon the nature of its implementation. In this talk, I will draw on findings from multiple studies of instructional policy implementation to put forth a portrait of implementation as the intersection of learning and power. Policy often requires teachers and others to learn instructional approaches in a process that is shaped by social interaction and constrained by organizational conditions. At the same time, this learning is shaped in profound ways by relations of power and authority. Finally, I will show how these learning and political processes are key to stability and change in the social structure of schools and schooling.
	Prof. Naomi Ellemers, Universiteit Utrecht (NL) Visit her homepage. Diversity, ambition, and career success During the past years, increasing numbers of women have obtained university degrees and have started academic careers. Yet, despite numerous initiatives promoting diversity and gender equality, women still are less likely to advance and have success in acquiring research grants or positions of academic leadership. Attempts to explain this pattern often refer to biological features of men and women that elicit systematic differences in their skills, interests, and life choices. In this talk, I will draw on different strands of research carried out in my lab, to examine the validity of these explanations through the lens of social and organizational psychology. These studies systematically compare the influence of individual level abilities and ambitions of men and women against their work experiences and leadership in the organization. The insight this provides into mechanisms that explain the differential career success of men and women can help organizations develop more effective diversity policies, both in academia and in the labor market more generally.
	Prof. James Gross, Stanford University (USA) Visit his homepage. Emotion Regulation From time immemorial, we have been deeply ambivalent about our emotions. On the one hand, emotions are said to aid in decision-making, prepare us for rapid motor responses in times of trouble, and facilitate social interactions. At the same time, however, emotions are said to be dangerous and destructive, crippling our ability to think flexibly, leading us to respond maladaptively, and compromising crucial social relationships. In this talk, I draw upon recent work in affective science to consider what emotions are, why we are so ambivalent about them, and how we can skillfully regulate our emotions so that we can make the most of them.

 >Learn more on the future Doctors Honoris Causa

On the same day, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our Faculty and the 10th anniversary of our Institute. 

The program of the day will include the official ceremony of insignia awarding, scientific activities and festive activities. Save this date: your presence will be at the same time a mark of respect for our guests, the sign of your belonging to our entities, and a way of reinforcing our links around this major event for our community.

>Registration

Séance académique

• Jeudi 30 avril 2015 à 17h30, auditoire Socrate 10, place Cardinal Mercier 10, Louvain-la-Neuve 

Le professeur Vincent Blondel, recteur de l’Université catholique de Louvain,
le professeur Bernard Dubuisson, vice-recteur du Secteur des sciences humaines,
le professeur Mariane Frenay, doyenne de la Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation,
le professeur Olivier Corneille, président de l’Institut de recherche en sciences psychologiques,

ont l’honneur de vous inviter à la cérémonie de remise des insignes de Docteur honoris causa aux professeurs

William Hirst, New School for Social Research, New York City
Présentation du professeur William Hirst, par le professeur Olivier Luminet

Michael McCullough, University of Miami
Présentation du professeur Michael McCullough, par le professeur Vassilis Saroglou

Marc Durand, Université de Genève
Présentation du professeur Marc Durand, par le professeur Françoise de Viron

>Introduction : Olivier Corneille, Président de l’institut (PDF)

Conférences

• Jeudi 30 avril à 13h30, auditoire Socrate 11, place Cardinal Mercier 10, Louvain-la-Neuve

Social aspects of forgetting

Professeur William Hirst, New School for Social Research, New York City

One can characterize the content of an act of remembering not only in terms of what is mentioned, but also of what goes unmentioned, whether unmentioned by choice or because the information is no longer readily accessible.  That is, in many cases, remembering can also conversely be considered an act of forgetting.  In this talk, I will explore the social aspects of forgetting.  Remembering often involves acts of communicating, be it one person talking to another in a conversation, a television reporter updating viewers about unfolding news events, or a professor lecturing students.  Usually selective, communicative remembering will reinforce the mentioned memories, but the “silences” in the remembering can also induce forgetting.  Such remembering-induced forgetting holds both for the communicator and the recipient of the communication.  When do communicative acts of remembering induce forgetting?  How do the social relationships between communicator and recipient and the goals of the communication affect when remembering-induced forgetting occurs?  And, because the effect holds for all parties of the communication, when do these memory effects lead to the formation of a collective memory?  The possibility that seeming flaws of memory, as forgetting often is believed to be, can promote the formation of collective memories suggests that forgetting may have adaptive value, in that it may facilitate human sociality.

>The presentation (PDF)

• Jeudi 30 avril à 14h30, auditoire Socrate 11, place Cardinal Mercier 10, Louvain-la-Neuve

Cognitive Systems for Revenge and Forgiveness

Professeur Michael McCullough, University of Miami

Exploitation is a fact of life for social organisms. Because of its pervasiveness in social life, natural selection gives rise to deterrence mechanisms (e.g., thorns, toxins, defensive weaponry) designed to alter potential exploiters’ estimates of the net benefits to come from exploitation. In this talk, I situate humans’ propensities to seek revenge among other naturally selected deterrence mechanisms. Revenge-based deterrence, however, can create additional costs, including costs associated with lost access to valuable relationship partners. Consequently, natural selection gives rise to subsidiary mechanisms designed to inhibit revenge-based deterrence and signal a willingness to re-establish positive relations. I conceptualize these subsidiary systems as reconciliation (or forgiveness) systems. I will discuss research in which we have sought to specify the selection pressures that revenge and forgiveness evolved to address, and sought to describe the computations that underlie these systems.

>The presentation (PDF)
 

• Jeudi 30 avril à 16h00, auditoire Socrate 11, place Cardinal Mercier 10, Louvain-la-Neuve

Une perspective centrée sur l’analyse de l’activité en éducation des adultes

Professeur Marc Durand  Université de Genève

La formation des adultes est une composante majeure de l’éducation au 21ème siècle, et fait aujourd’hui l’objet de recherches soutenues. Mes propres travaux ont pour objet l’activité humaine, abordée selon les postulats d’enaction, de sémiose et de conscience pré-réflexive. Quelques résultats saillants de ces recherches illustrent leur contribution à a) une connaissance précise des pratiques sociales de travail, de loisir, familiales, sportives, artistiques…, et du renouvellement de ce qu’elles demandent aux acteurs qui s’y engagent, et b) l’énonciation de principes de conception d’environnements éducatifs prometteurs d’innovations et de transformations majorantes de l’activité des hommes, en lien avec ces nouvelles demandes sociales. Les résultats de ces recherches constituent des arguments pour une conception développementale de l’éducation des adultes, et soulignent la nécessité d’aller vers la définition moderne et consensuelle d’un idéal de l’homme éduqué du 21ème siècle.

>The presentation (PDF)

Séminaires, réservés aux membres IPSY et PSP

• Mercredi 29 avril de 14h à 16h, local : salle du conseil A224

Thanks to Darwin: Gratitude and the Evolution of Friendship in Biological Markets. Michael E. McCullough, University of Miami - USA

Emotion theorists have speculated about the functions of gratitude for two millennia, but little definitive scientific progress could be made before the advent of two powerful tools for thinking: Darwin's theory of natural selection and the computational theory of mind. In this talk, I review a dozen empirical facts for which a tenable theory of gratitude must account, and then describe a theory that meets this challenge. Our explanation for gratitude commits to a function: Gratitude's function is to motivate behaviors that induce seemingly profitable relationship partners to include the grateful individual within their circles of most favored cooperation partners. Put plainly, gratitude motivates humans to be a friend in order to make a friend. In this talk I will present results from some experiments in which novel predictions based on this hypothesis were tested.

Invitant : Vassilis Saroglou, Centre de psychologie de la religion

>The presentation (PDF)

• Mercredi 29 avril à 17h Montesquieu 1

Cultures d’action, transformation de l’activité et éducation des adultes. Professeur Marc Durand, Université de Genève
Informations

Invitante : Françoise de Viron

• Jeudi 30 avril à 10h30, local : Socrate 24

Intergenerational Transmission of Memory: Case Studies Across the World. William Hirst, New School for Social Research - USA

As the refrain “never forget” insists, the intergenerational transmission of memories is a moral imperative, the basis for communal legacy, and a daunting challenge. The way transmission, reception, and consequences of intergenerational memories unfolds depends on a host of factors, including (1) the nature of the memory, (2) the psychological dynamics of members of each generation, (3) societal factors, such as the presence or absence of cultural artifacts, and (4) the cultural factors. The present talk explores each of these issues in a wide variety of cultural contexts. It will particularly focus on the intersection of personal memories and historical memories of WWII, the Argentine Military Junta of 1967, and the attack of September 11, 2001.

Invitant : Olivier Luminet, Personality, Emotion, Cognition and Health Lab ; Cognition, Health, Emotion and Social Studies Lab 

>The presentation (PDF)

>La vidéo de la cérémonie