Research
Research interests:
Voluntary actions, sense of agency, responsibility, empathy; compassion; forensic psychology and psychiatry, psychopathology and antisocial behaviours, (im)moral decision-making, free will, moral consciousness, conscious intention, synaesthesia, robotics and prosthesis, body-ownership.
Brie bio:
I am now an Associate Professor at Ghent University (Belgium). After a master degree in neuropsychology and cognitive psychology and a certificate in forensic sciences and psychiatry, I realized a PhD in social and cognitive neurosciences at the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) with Axel Cleeremans. I stayed at University College London (UK) during one year and a half in the lab of Patrick Haggard and I obtained a Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship to realize a 2-years postdoc at the Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences (NL) with Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola.
I developed my main expertise on themes related to obedience to authority: How obedience to an authority changes individual cognition? Why obeying orders impacts moral behaviors? What neuro-cognitive mechanisms play a role in preventing individuals from complying with immoral orders? When approaching those themes, I started working with NGO and non-academics institutions and I started to understand that restricting myself to the WEIRDs will not give me a global overview of the societal impact of my research. I thus started to initiate scientific projects in countries and populations that are never or barely not approached by neuroscientists, such as inmates, military or perpetrators and survivors of a genocide.
I also work as a scientific consultant to offer my expertise in behavioral neuroscience for humanitarian and societal projects (Be Brain Consultancy). I use methods from psychology and neuroscience in order to develop efficient tools to prevent blind obedience and promote peace-building.
Personal blog on field research: https://emiliecaspar.home.blog/
Lab website: https://moralsocialbrain.com/
Techniques and methods:
Behavioral, EEG, ERPs, TFR, fMRI, robots (humanoid or hand), Brain-computer Interface
