
Bio
Manos Tsakiris is Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London where he leads the Lab of Action & Body and the INtheSELF ERC-funded project. He is also leading the BIAS (Body & Image in Arts & Science) project, funded by the NOMIS Foundation, at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
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Research
What is the link between the body and the self? How do we become aware of ourselves and of others? How do we relate to and respond to the images that power human culture? These are some of the key questions that we research.
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People
Academics are fortunate enough to spend their whole career surrounded by young minds. A privilege that few other professions can give you. These are the people who make our research possible, successful and most enjoyable. The people to whom I am grateful for their creativity, skills and openness.
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Publications
Since 2003, our research has resulted in numerous publications in peer-reviewed international journals. In addition to the research articles we publish, we think it is important to take the time to consolidate our findings in original theoretical and review papers.Several of our papers are among the most-cited articles in our field of research (source: Thomson Reuters Citation Thresholds).
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News
We are trying to stay on top of things, be aware of the most important news in our field and whenever possible to contribute to what is timely and important.
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Media
Our research has attracted interest from media around the world, and has appeared in major international news organizations, such Reuters, BBC, The Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Figaro, Wall Street Journal, El Mundo, Huffington Post, and Scientific American.
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Events
Ideas
Engagement
Consultancy
Lara Maister

I completed an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences, specializing in Experimental Psychology (BA First Class Hons., 2007), followed by a PhD (Experimental Psychology, 2011) at the University of Cambridge. During my PhD, I investigated episodic memory retrieval mechanisms in children with high-functioning ASD under the supervision of Dr. Kate Plaisted-Grant. In 2011, I began a postdoctoral research fellowship with Professor Manos Tsakiris in the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway University of London, where I developed my current research focus on body representation and embodied social cognition. I moved to the Warburg Institute at the School of Advanced Study, University of London to continue my work with Prof. Tsakiris in 2016, and currently share my time between the Warburg and the Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck, where I am a lecturer affiliated with the Body Representation Laboratory of Professor Matt Longo.
Research Interests
During my post-doctoral research, I became fascinated with intersubjectivity and body representation, most recently in developing infants as well as adults. My current research is primarily focussed on the distinction and integration of self- and other-representations. At the bodily level, I use body illusions to experimentally modulate the embodied experience of the self in relation to others, and investigate how this affects the way we process social information. In the opposite direction, I test how socially-relevant information, such as group membership, personal association or facial self-resemblance, can alter the way we represent our own bodies and ‘share’ the embodied experiences of others, such as in empathy for pain, motor mimicry, touch referral and emotional contagion. Another branch of my research focusses on interoception, our sensitivity to physical sensations from inside our bodies, in both adults and pre-verbal infants.
I use a range of behavioural, physiological and neuroscientific measures in my research, including EEG, TMS, fMRI, cardiac measurement, psychophysics and reaction time measures. I am currently carrying out research both in the Laboratory of Action and Body of Professor Tsakiris, currently based at the Warburg Institute in the School of Advanced Study, and also the Body Representation Laboratory of Professor Longo at Birkbeck
Publications
Farmer, H. & Maister, L. (2017). Putting Ourselves in Another’s Skin: Using the Plasticity of Self-Perception to Enhance Empathy and Decrease Prejudice. Social Justice Research, 1-32. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-017-0294-1
Maister, L., Tang, T., & Tsakiris, M. (2017). Neurobehavioral evidence of interoceptive sensitivity in early infancy. eLife. 6:e25318. https://elifesciences.org/articles/25318
Maister, L., Lee, L., & Tsakiris, M. (2017). The relational body: Sharing bodily experiences from infancy to adulthood. Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology Reflections. http://www.regents.ac.uk/media/3490392/reflections-journal_sept-2017.pdf
Maister, L., Hodossy, L. & Tsakiris, M. (2017). You Fill My Heart: Looking at One's Partner Increases Interoceptive Accuracy. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(2), 248-257.http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2017-25583-003.html
Payne, S., Tsakiris, M., & Maister, L. (2017). Can the self become another? Investigating the effects of self-association with a new face-identity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(6), 1085-1097.http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17470218.2015.1137329
Maister, L. & Farmer, H. (2016). Attending to the bodily self. Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 28-29. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17588928.2015.1075490
Maister, L., & Tsakiris, M. (2016). Intimate imitation: Automatic motor imitation in romantic relationships. Cognition, 152, 108-113.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027716300737?via%3Dihub
Maister, L., & Tsakiris, M. (2015). The plasticity of self-other boundaries. In M. H. Fischer & Y. Coello (Eds.), Conceptual and Interactive Embodiment: Foundations of Embodied Cognition (182-198). NY: Routledge.
Maister, L., Slater, M., Sanchez-Vives, M. V., & Tsakiris, M. (2015). Changing bodies changes minds: owning another body affects social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(1) 6-12. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661314002344?via%3Dihub
Maister, L., Cardini, F., Zamariola, G., Serino, A., & Tsakiris, M. (2015). Your Place or Mine: Shared Sensory Experiences Elicit a Remapping of Peripersonal Space. Neuropsychologia, 70, 455-461.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002839321400387X
Ainley, V., Maister, L. & Tsakiris, M. (2015). Heartfelt empathy? No association between interoceptive awareness, questionnaire measures of empathy, reading the mind in the eyes task or the director task. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 554.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00554/full
Maister, L. & Tsakiris, M. (2014). My Face, My Heart: Cultural Differences in Integrated Bodily Self-Awareness. Cognitive Neuroscience, 5(1), 10-16.http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17588928.2013.808613
Farmer, H., Maister, L. and Tsakiris, M. (2014) Change my body, change my mind: the effects of illusory ownership of an outgroup hand on implicit attitudes toward that outgroup. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(1016).https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.01016/full
Maister, L., Simons, J. S., & Plaisted-Grant, K. (2013). Executive functions are employed to process episodic and relational memories in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Neuropsychology, 27(6), 615-627.http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-39903-001
Ainley, V., Maister, L., Brokfeld, J., Farmer, H., & Tsakiris, M. (2013). More of myself: Manipulating interoceptive awareness by heightened attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self. Consciousness and Cognition, 22(4), 1231-1238.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810013001086?via%3Dihub
Maister, L., Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G., & Tsakiris, M. (2013). Experiencing ownership over a dark-skinned body reduces implicit racial bias. Cognition, 128(2), 170-178.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027713000772?via%3Dihub
Maister, L., Banissy, M., & Tsakiris, M. (2013). Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia Changes Representations of Self-Identity. Neuropsychologia, 51(5), 802-808.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393213000341?via%3Dihub
Maister, L., Tsiakkas, E., & Tsakiris, M. (2013). I Feel Your Fear: Shared Touch Between Faces Facilitates Recognition of Fearful Facial Expressions. Emotion, 13(1), 7-13.http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-02537-001
Maister, L., & Plaisted-Grant, K. (2011). Time perception and its relationship to memory in Autism Spectrum Conditions. Developmental Science, 14(6), 1311-1322. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01077.x/abstract;jsessionid=8C873E3FE982FB6045B6C4E470BE29AC.f02t03
Contact
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017 Manos Tsakiris
Manos Tsakiris
Department of Psychology
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, UK
tel: +44 (0) 1784 276266
fax: +44 (0) 1784 434347
e-mail: manos.tsakiris@rhul.ac.uk
Manos Tsakiris
Department of Psychology
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, UK
tel: +44 (0) 1784 276266
fax: +44 (0) 1784 434347
e-mail: manos.tsakiris@rhul.ac.uk
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017 Manos Tsakiris