Philip A. Gable

Biography

Philip A. Gable, Ph.D. is a professor and the director of the social psychology area in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. He is also the graduate director of UD's Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program.

His program of research investigates the interplay of emotion, motivation, personality, and cognition. He is interested in investigating the ways emotions modulate thoughts, motivate behaviors, and are expressed in the brain.

To pursue these questions, he takes a multi-method approach, examining both the neuropsychological and neurophysiological aspects associated with these processes. To examine the influence of these affects on psychological processes, he investigates a breadth of cognitive, perceptual, and behavioral measures.

Gable's work examines neurophysiological processes such as hemispheric asymmetry, EEG frequency, event-related potentials, and reflex physiology. Utilizing these psychological and psychophysiological methods provides a more complete understanding of the role of motivational processes. From these investigations, he has developed the motivational dimensional model of cognitive scope, proposing that motivational direction and intensity influence cognitive and perceptual scope.

A large body of Gable's research has focused on affects often underexplored in previous literature with unique motivational properties: positive affects high (vs. low) in motivational intensity, and negative affects with approach-motivatio​nal tendencies. Another line of his research seeks to investigate the individual differences and attitudes underlying affective and neurophysiological processes. Gable's interest lies in developing psychologically and neurophysiologically based theoretical models of affect and motivation. These areas of interest extend across broad areas of psychological and applied science.

Research Area

Social psychology