Kristen A. Lindquist, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she directs the Carolina Affective Science Lab and the Social Psychology PhD program. She is also a faculty member in the Developmental Psychology PhD program and the Human Neuroimaging Group in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Biomedical Research Imaging Center and the Neurobiology Curriculum in the School of Medicine.

Kristen’s research has established evidence for a constructionist theory of emotion that explains how our emotions are both created by basic neural mechanisms and shaped by social and cultural contexts. To address questions about the nature of emotion, her research employs tools from social psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, psychophysiology, neuroscience, linguistics, and cultural evolution. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and private foundations.

Kristen received her A.B. in Psychology and English from Boston College in 2004 and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Boston College in 2010. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the interdisciplinary Harvard University Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative from 2010-2012, during which she was affiliated with the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. 

Kristen is currently the President of the Society for Affective Science, an international scholarly society focused on promoting innovative interdisciplinary research on emotion, moods, attitudes, decision-making, and other phenomena related to affect. She is also an Associate Editor at the journal Emotion and was an inaugural Associate Editor at the journal Affective Science from 2019-2023. 

She is the recipient of multiple honors including being named a "Rising Star in Psychological Science" by the Association for Psychological Science, a Fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. She has also received multiple awards for both teaching and mentorship, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Provost’s Johnstone Excellence in Teaching Award.

When not doing science, Kristen can be found spending time with her two daughters and husband, reading fiction, and being outdoors.