Our people

Associate Professor Francesco Foroni

Deputy Head of School
School of Behavioural and Health Sciences - Psychology

Areas of expertise: food perception and choice; eating behaviours; embodied cognition; social cognitive neuroscience

Phone: +61 (0)2 9701 4538

Email: francesco.foroni@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Strathfield Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4702-3678

Associate Professor Francesco Foroni obtained his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Oregon (USA). Subsequently was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the VU University Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Between 2010 and 2012 he was appointed as Research Fellow and Lecturer at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). Then he worked as Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at SISSA (Trieste, Italy). In 2016 he joined the Australian Catholic University as Senior Lecturer and he is part of the School of Behavioural and Health Sciences. In 2018 he has been appointed Assistant Deputy Head of School and since 2020 Deputy Head of School - Strathfield.

Associate Professor Francesco Foroni's research agenda focuses on perceptual, affective and cognitive processes involved in food perception, food choice, and eating behaviours. With an interdisciplinary approach he combines paradigms assessing individual differences, implicit and explicit attitudes, decision making, and preference with the aim to directly apply the results to clinical and healthy populations.

For instance, he is investigating how food is perceived in the environment and how basic characteristics of the food (e.g., calorie content), perceiver' s characteristics (e.g., restrained eating tendencies, orthorexic tendencies, body mass index, eating habits), and environmental aspects may affect our judgements on food attractiveness/tastiness/likelihood of buying. A second example relates to the investigation of possible interventions to improve eating behaviours. Starting from solid experimental evidence from previous work his research tests the efficacy of scalable and cost-effective brief intervention(s) in improving eating behaviours (i.e., actual food intake).

Download curriculum vitae

Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=30767558200

Google-Scholar: http://scholar.google.it/citations?user=PCyRG4MAAAAJ&hl=it

ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/G-5469-2012

Academia: https://nestpillmart.academia.edu/FrancescoForoni

Select publications

Eating behaviours

• Chen, P-J, Coricelli, C., Kaya, S., Rumiati, R. I., & Foroni, F. (2022). The role of associative learning in healthy and sustainable food evaluations: an event-related potential study. Neuroscience Research, 183, 61-75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neures.2022.07.002
• Foroni, F., Esmaeilikia, M. & Rumiati, R.I. (2022). What makes a food healthy? Sex differences in what is associated to healthiness evaluations. Food Quality and Preference, 96, 104438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104438
• Batalha, L., Foroni, F., & Jones, B.J. (2021). All Plant Breeding Technologies Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal than Others: The Case of GM and Mutagenesis. Frontiers in Plant Science, 12, 1325. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.657133
• Coricelli, C., Foroni, F., Osimo, S. A, & Rumiati, R.I. (2019). Implicit and explicit evaluations of foods: The natural and transformed dimension. Food Quality And Preference, 73, 143-153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2018.11.014
• Mengotti, P., Foroni, F., Rumiati, R.I. (2019). Neural correlates of intrinsic food properties during perception and response inhibition. NeuroImage, 184, 130-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.017
• Aiello, M., Ambron, E., Situlin, R., Foroni, F., Biolo, G., & Rumiati R.I. (2018). Body weight and its association with impulsivity in middle and old age individuals. Brain and Cognition, 123, 103-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2018.03.006
• Foroni, F. & Rumiati, R.I. (2017). Food perception and categorization: implicit and explicit evaluations and choice. In H. Cohen & C. Lefebvre (Eds.). Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Sciences, 2e. Elsevier, San Diego, US, pp. 271-287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101107-2.00012-9
• Pergola, G., Foroni, F., Mengotti, P., Argiris, A., & Rumiati, R.I. (2017). A neural signature of food semantics is associated with body-mass index. Biological Psychology, 129, 282-292. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.09.001
• Foroni, F., Pergola, G., & Rumiati, R.I. (2016). Food color is in the eye of the beholder: the role of human trichromatic vision in food evaluation. Scientific Reports, 6, 37034. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep37034
• Foroni, F., Rumiati, R.I., Coricelli, C., & Ambron, E., (2016). A bait that we cannot avoid: Food-induced motor distractibility. Brain and Cognition, 110, 74-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.12.003
• Rumiati, R.I. & Foroni, F. (2016). We are what we eat: How food is represented in our mind/brain. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 23, 1043-1054. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0908-2

Replicability crisis

• Bago, B., … Foroni, F., … Balazs, A. (2022). Situational factors shape moral judgments in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern, and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01319-5
• Dorison, C. A., … Foroni, F., … & Coles, N. C. (2022). In COVID-19 health messaging, loss framing increases anxiety with little-to-no concomitant benefits: Experimental evidence from 84 countries. Affective Science, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00128-3
• Psychological Science Accelerator. Self-Determination Theory Collaboration. (2022). A Global Experiment on Motivating Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(22), e2111091119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111091119
• Jones, B. C., … Foroni, F., … Coles, N. A. (2021). To Which World Regions Does the Valence-Dominance Model of Social Perception Apply? Nature Human Behaviour, 5(1), 159-169. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7611443.v1
• Wang, K., . . . Foroni, F., … Moshontz, H. (2021). A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature Human Behaviour, 5, 1089-1110. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01007-2
• Wagenmakers, E.-J., . . . , Foroni, F., . . ., Zwaan, R. A. (2016). Registered Replication Report: Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), 917-928. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916166744

Emotion processing

• Coles, N., … Foroni, F., … Liuzza, M.T. (2022). A Multi-Lab Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis by The Many Smiles Collaboration. Nature Human Behaviour. 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01458-9
• Foroni, F. (2022). Multimodality, facial expression, and emotional language. In G.L. Schiewer, J. Altarriba, & B.C. Ng (Eds.). Handbook on Language and Emotion (pp. 364-384). De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, Germany. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110347524-017
• Baumeister, J-C., Foroni, F., Conrad, M., Rumiati, R.I. & Winkielman, P. (2017) Embodiment and Emotional Memory in First vs. Second Language. Frontiers in Psychology, 8:394. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00394
• Ambron, E., Rumiati, R.I., & Foroni, F. (2016). Do emotions or gender drive our actions? A study of motor distractibility. Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 160-169. https://doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2015.1085373
• Baumeister, J-C., Papa, G., & Foroni, F. (2016). Deeper than skin deep - The effect of botulinum toxin-A on emotion processing. Toxicon, 118, 86-90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.toxicon.2016.04.044
• Foroni, F. (2015). Do we embody Second Language? Evidence for 'partial' simulation during processing of a second language. Brain and Cognition, 99, 8-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.06.006

Projects

• Effect of brief intervention(s) on food intake
  https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/#recordDetails
• 'Orthorexia': how and when healthy eating can be unhealthy
  https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/#recordDetails
• The Buffet effect: contextual effects on food perception and judgement
  https://osf.io/b9n56/

Appointments and Affiliations

Appointments

• Deputy Head of School of Behavioural and Health Science - Australian Catholic University (2020-present)
• Associate Professor. Australian Catholic University (2022-present)
• Assistant Deputy Head of School of Behavioural and Health Science - Australian Catholic University (2018-2019)
• Psychological Science-Fourth Year Courses Coordinator of School of Behavioural and Health Science - Australian Catholic University (2018)
• Senior Lecturer. Australian Catholic University (2016-2021)
• Faculty Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor - SISSA-Trieste, Italy (2012-2016)
• Adjunct Professor - University of Oslo, Norway (2015)
• Lecturer - Utrecht University, The Netherlands (2011-2012)
• Post-Doctoral Fellow - Utrecht University, The Netherlands (2010-2011)
• Post-Doctoral Fellow - VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2005-2010)

Affiliations

• European Association for Social Psychology (EASP; Full member: 2004-)
• Italian Association of Psychology (AIP; Full member: 2010-)

Editorial roles

Editorial experience profile

• https://publons.com/author/1198421/francesco-foroni#profile

Editorial Membership

• Associate Editor of British Journal of Social Psychology (2020-present)
• Review Editor of Frontiers in Psychology, Cognition (2015-present)
• Consulting Editor of European Journal of Social Psychology (2012-2015)

International journal review panels

Reviewer for International Journals (selected list):

• Acta Psychologica
• Appetite
• Behavior Research Methods
• Biological Psychology
• Cognition & Emotion
• Cortex
• Emotion
• Food Quality and Preference
• Frontiers in Physiology
• Frontiers in Psychology
• Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
• Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics
• Journal of Non-verbal Behavior
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• PLOSE-one
• Stigma and Health

Book Reviewer for publishers:

• Sage, Footprint (2018, 2019)

Grant agency review panels

• Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) - Expert Panel Member (2020-)
• European Science Foundation (ESF) - College of Expert Reviewer (2016-)
• European Science Foundation (ESF) - Grant Reviewer (2009-)