Cynthia Whissell Author

Cynthia Whissell is an Emeritus Professor (Liberal Arts/Psychology) at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, who is currently teaching part-time. She has been teaching at the University level since 1968, and became interested in emotion in the 1980s. Her research has two main prongs that focus on the quantification of emotion: one addresses the emotional underpinnings of words and another the emotional communication in sounds. The hypothesis underlying these two types of research is that what we say (or what we write) carries emotional as well as cognitive messages, and that the emotional dimensions of Pleasantness and Activation can be used to read the emotional messages. Cynthia has published two books and many research articles, most of these in the area of emotion. She has taught a course in emotion regularly since the mid-1980s. She has also taught emotion online (at a distance). Her second area of interest lies in research design and statistical analysis.