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Katherine O'Connell Portrait

Recent Alum

Katie O’Connell, PhD

Social Scientist, The Lab @ DC

Katie is a graduate student in Georgetown’s Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN). She received her Bachelors of Science degree in Biology-Neuroscience from The Pennsylvania State University in 2013. She then completed a post-baccalaureate research fellowship with Drs. Christian Grillon and Monique Ernst at the NIMH in which her focus was using fMRI and psychophysiological techniques to investigate neural mechanisms underlying anxiety. She joined LSAN in the spring of 2016 and is working towards her PhD investigating the subcortical substrates of altruism and affective empathy.

Recent Publications

O'Connell, K., Rhoads, S. A., Marsh, A. A.

(2024).

Fear: An Evolutionary Perspective on Its Biological, Behavioral, and Communicative Features

In: The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions, pp. 500-519. Oxford University Press.

Law, K.F., Amormino, P., Marsh, A. A., O’Connor, B.B.

(2024).

Ethical reasoning versus empathic bias: a false dichotomy?

In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(1), 1-4.

Rhoads, S. A., O'Connell, K., Berluti, K., Ploe, M. L., Elizabeth, H. S., Amormino, P., Li, J., Dutton, M. A., VanMeter, A. S., Marsh, A. A.

(2023).

Neural responses underlying extraordinary altruists’ generosity for socially distant others

In: PNAS Nexus, pgad199

Rhoads, S. A., Vekaria, K., O'Connell, K., Elizabeth, H. S., Rand, D., Williams, M. K. & Marsh, A. A.

(2023).

Unselfish traits and social decision-making patterns characterize six populations of real-world extraordinary altruists

In: Nature Communications, 14, 1807

Amormino, P., O’Connell, K., Vekaria, K. M., Robertson, E. L., Meena, L., & Marsh, A. A.

(2022).

Beliefs about humanity, not higher power, predict extraordinary altruism

In: Journal of Research in Personality 101, 104313