Nicholas A. Coles

Nicholas is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in affective science and the emerging field of meta-science. In affective science, Nicholas seeks to understand the social, cognitive, and physiological processes that underlie the conscious experience of emotion. Much of his research in this domain has focused on the facial feedback hypothesis, the idea that sensorimotor feedback from facial expression movements can impact emotional processes (e.g., that smiling can make us feel happy, frowning makes us feel sad). In meta-science, Nicholas is interested in (a) evaluating the epistemological limitations of social science and (b) building infrastructure that improves the reliability and efficiency of scientific endeavors. Much of his work in this domain focuses on serving as the Director of the Psychological Science Accelerator: a globally distributed consortium of researchers who pool intellectual and material resources to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable knowledge in psychological science.