Joe Forgas

Scientia Professor Joe Forgas is a distinguished academic at the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. With a career spanning several decades, he has established himself as a leading researcher in social psychology, particularly in the domain of affect and social cognition. His work has been recognized with prestigious awards including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize (1994), Australian Research Council Special Investigator Award (1996), and the Australian Psychological Society Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (2004).

Professor Forgas completed his BA (Hons.) at Macquarie University in 1974, followed by a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1977, and a D.Sc. from the same institution in 1990. His academic journey has been marked by extensive scholarly contributions, with numerous books, edited volumes, book chapters, and journal articles published throughout his career.

His primary research interests focus on affect and social cognition, interpersonal behavior, social perception, person memory and attributions, cognitive and interactional theories of personality, political perception and voting behavior, verbal and nonverbal communication, group behavior and group judgements, and multidimensional scaling methods in psychology. Professor Forgas is particularly renowned for developing the Affect Infusion Model (AIM), which explains how mood states influence cognitive processing and social judgments.

His recent work has explored the relationship between mood states and various cognitive and social processes, including humor production, gullibility, ingratiation strategies, language processing, and economic decision-making. Professor Forgas has demonstrated that negative mood states often enhance certain cognitive processes, challenging the common assumption that positive mood is universally beneficial.

• Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize, Germany, 1994
• Australian Research Council Special Investigator Award, 1996
• Australian Psychological Society Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, 2004
• Australian Psychological Society Early Career Award, 1982

Professor Forgas has supervised numerous students throughout his career and has been involved in significant research grants that have advanced our understanding of how affective states influence social cognition and behavior. His work has important implications for various applied domains including legal settings, political decision-making, and interpersonal communication.

He has established a productive research laboratory at UNSW that has produced groundbreaking work on the interplay between emotion and cognition. His research team has conducted numerous experimental studies examining how transient mood states influence memory, judgment, and social behavior across diverse contexts.