Megan Edwards
Biographic Data
| ID | 3743766 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megan Edwards |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megan |
| FAMILY NAME | Edwards |
| SIGNATURE | EDWARDS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Missouri |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5294-2513 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Small but Still Significant
Awe is an emotion elicited from experiencing great vastness that dramatically expands a person’s frame of reference. In this way, awe has been found to have numerous effects on the self, including feeling “small.” While smallness has previously been confounded with insignificance, little research has fully examined awe’s effects on existential significance (or insignificance). Four within-person experiments tested the effects of awe on subjective…
Hope as a meaningful emotion
Six studies (combined N = 2,312) examined the emotion of hope as a unique and robust predictor of meaning in life. In cross-sectional data (Studies 1-2), affective hope predicted greater meaning, controlling for other positive affect, and agency/pathways, in the majority of White U.S. samples. Utilizing a daily diary (Study 3), daily hope predicted daily meaning independent of positive emotions, in a Chinese sample. A five-wave longitudinal desig…
The Central Role of Daily Hopeful Feelings in Predicting Well‐Being
OBJECTIVE: Hope is associated with many positive outcomes. However, most research on hope has focused on its cognitive aspect, with few studies examining the affective aspect. To further clarify the nature of hope and its association with well-being, this study examined the relationship between the affective aspect of hope-namely, hopeful feelings-and various aspects of well-being. METHOD: = 28.17 ± 5.56). Hopeful feelings and affective (positive…
The Impact of Awe on Existential Isolation
We propose that awe has multifaceted relations with existential isolation, a feeling of separation between the self and others or the world. Three studies examined the relation between awe and existential isolation via feelings of small self (vastness, self-size, self-perspectives) and a sense of connectedness. Awe (vs. a control topic) was induced either using virtual reality (Study 1) or a recall task (Studies 2 and 3) and was indirectly associ…
A new hope induction
The experience of hope predicts a host of positive outcomes. However, to date, the psychology of hope has paid little attention to hope as an emotion, focusing instead on hope as a sense of effective goal pursuit. Seven studies ( N = 3,357) tested various manipulations intended to induce hopeful feelings distinct from general positive mood. Images of infant's faces and tree saplings were found to successfully induce hopeful feelings, even when co…
Bodily feedback
Most emotion theories recognise the importance of the body in expressing and constructing emotions. Focusing beyond the face, the present research adds needed empirical data on the effect of static full body postures on positive/negative affect. In Studies 1 (N = 110) and 2 (N = 79), using a bodily feedback paradigm, we manipulated postures to test causal effects on affective and physiological responses to emotionally ambiguous music. Across both…
Shades of expansiveness
In addition to the face, bodily posture plays an important role in communicating affective states. Postural expansion-how much space the body takes up-has been much studied as expressing and signaling dominance and pride. The present research aimed to expand research on the range of affect dimensions and affect-laden personality characteristics that are expressed via expansiveness, investigating specific forms of expansiveness and their interacti…
Divergent effects of social media use on meaning in life via loneliness and existential isolation during the coronavirus pandemic
Stay-at-home orders issued to combat the growing number of infections during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 had many psychological consequences for people including elevated stress, anxiety, and difficulty maintaining meaning in their lives. The present studies utilized cross-sectional designs and were conducted to better understand how social media usage related to people's subjective isolation (i.e., social loneliness, emotional loneliness, a…
Embodiment of Worship
In addition to a set of beliefs, religion is fundamentally a corporeal practice. Across religions, specific postures adopted for prayer and worship may not simply reflect arbitrary customs but are closely intertwined with religious experience. This contribution reviews embodiment theory and related empirical evidence showing how body postures influence our emotions, thoughts, and decision-making. We propose a typology of postures adopted in relig…
Emotion Expression in Context
Religious and spiritual struggles alter God representations
Fair-as-Foodway
Virginia Ham
The Virginia ham, a regional delicacy, provides a unique opportunity to explore the local and global dynamics at play in the colonial foodways of the British North Atlantic. Moving beyond the simple question of origins, I ask why people ate this food with such gusto in this period and place and seek to explain the ham's development and rise to fame. Whereas earlier scholarly fixation on the food as object provides important insights, the interest…
Divergent effects of social media use on meaning in life via loneliness and existential isolation during the coronavirus pandemic
Stay-at-home orders issued to combat the growing number of infections during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 had many psychological consequences for people including elevated stress, anxiety, and difficulty maintaining meaning in their lives. The present studies utilized cross-sectional designs and were conducted to better understand how social media usage related to people's subjective isolation (i.e., social loneliness, emotional loneliness, a…
The Central Role of Daily Hopeful Feelings in Predicting Well‐Being
OBJECTIVE: Hope is associated with many positive outcomes. However, most research on hope has focused on its cognitive aspect, with few studies examining the affective aspect. To further clarify the nature of hope and its association with well-being, this study examined the relationship between the affective aspect of hope-namely, hopeful feelings-and various aspects of well-being. METHOD: = 28.17 ± 5.56). Hopeful feelings and affective (positive…
Fair-as-Foodway
Virginia Ham
The Virginia ham, a regional delicacy, provides a unique opportunity to explore the local and global dynamics at play in the colonial foodways of the British North Atlantic. Moving beyond the simple question of origins, I ask why people ate this food with such gusto in this period and place and seek to explain the ham's development and rise to fame. Whereas earlier scholarly fixation on the food as object provides important insights, the interest…
Fair-as-Foodway
Religious and spiritual struggles alter God representations
Embodiment of Worship
In addition to a set of beliefs, religion is fundamentally a corporeal practice. Across religions, specific postures adopted for prayer and worship may not simply reflect arbitrary customs but are closely intertwined with religious experience. This contribution reviews embodiment theory and related empirical evidence showing how body postures influence our emotions, thoughts, and decision-making. We propose a typology of postures adopted in relig…
Emotion Expression in Context
Bodily feedback
Most emotion theories recognise the importance of the body in expressing and constructing emotions. Focusing beyond the face, the present research adds needed empirical data on the effect of static full body postures on positive/negative affect. In Studies 1 (N = 110) and 2 (N = 79), using a bodily feedback paradigm, we manipulated postures to test causal effects on affective and physiological responses to emotionally ambiguous music. Across both…
Shades of expansiveness
In addition to the face, bodily posture plays an important role in communicating affective states. Postural expansion-how much space the body takes up-has been much studied as expressing and signaling dominance and pride. The present research aimed to expand research on the range of affect dimensions and affect-laden personality characteristics that are expressed via expansiveness, investigating specific forms of expansiveness and their interacti…
Divergent effects of social media use on meaning in life via loneliness and existential isolation during the coronavirus pandemic
Stay-at-home orders issued to combat the growing number of infections during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 had many psychological consequences for people including elevated stress, anxiety, and difficulty maintaining meaning in their lives. The present studies utilized cross-sectional designs and were conducted to better understand how social media usage related to people's subjective isolation (i.e., social loneliness, emotional loneliness, a…
The Impact of Awe on Existential Isolation
We propose that awe has multifaceted relations with existential isolation, a feeling of separation between the self and others or the world. Three studies examined the relation between awe and existential isolation via feelings of small self (vastness, self-size, self-perspectives) and a sense of connectedness. Awe (vs. a control topic) was induced either using virtual reality (Study 1) or a recall task (Studies 2 and 3) and was indirectly associ…
A new hope induction
The experience of hope predicts a host of positive outcomes. However, to date, the psychology of hope has paid little attention to hope as an emotion, focusing instead on hope as a sense of effective goal pursuit. Seven studies ( N = 3,357) tested various manipulations intended to induce hopeful feelings distinct from general positive mood. Images of infant's faces and tree saplings were found to successfully induce hopeful feelings, even when co…
Small but Still Significant
Awe is an emotion elicited from experiencing great vastness that dramatically expands a person’s frame of reference. In this way, awe has been found to have numerous effects on the self, including feeling “small.” While smallness has previously been confounded with insignificance, little research has fully examined awe’s effects on existential significance (or insignificance). Four within-person experiments tested the effects of awe on subjective…
Hope as a meaningful emotion
Six studies (combined N = 2,312) examined the emotion of hope as a unique and robust predictor of meaning in life. In cross-sectional data (Studies 1-2), affective hope predicted greater meaning, controlling for other positive affect, and agency/pathways, in the majority of White U.S. samples. Utilizing a daily diary (Study 3), daily hope predicted daily meaning independent of positive emotions, in a Chinese sample. A five-wave longitudinal desig…
The Central Role of Daily Hopeful Feelings in Predicting Well‐Being
OBJECTIVE: Hope is associated with many positive outcomes. However, most research on hope has focused on its cognitive aspect, with few studies examining the affective aspect. To further clarify the nature of hope and its association with well-being, this study examined the relationship between the affective aspect of hope-namely, hopeful feelings-and various aspects of well-being. METHOD: = 28.17 ± 5.56). Hopeful feelings and affective (positive…
Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Feeling (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Communication (3 works) · Media Influence and Health (3 works)