Prof. Dr. Thomas Jacobsen
Curriculum
Thomas Jacobsen is Professor of Experimental and Biological Psychology at Helmut Schmidt University - University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg since 2009. In 2007 and 2008, he held visiting professorships at the University of Vienna and the FU Berlin. In 2009, Thomas Jacobsen was adjunct professor at the University of Leipzig before joining the Helmut Schmidt University. His research fields include auditory processing, speech perception and processing, executive functions, and the neurocognitive psychology of aesthetics. Thomas Jacobsen is President of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics and Member of the German Psychological Society.
Publications (selection)
- Jacobsen, T., & Höfel, L. (2003). Descriptive and evaluative judgment processes: Behavioral and electrophysiological indices of processing symmetry and aesthetics in: Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3 (4), pp. 289-299.
- Jacobsen, T., & Schröger, E. (2001). Is there pre-attentive memory-based comparison of pitch? in: Psychophysiology, 38 (4), pp. 723-727.
- Jacobsen, T., Schubotz, R. I., Höfel, L., & von Cramon, D. Y. (2006). Brain correlates of aesthetic judgment of beauty in: NeuroImage, 29 (1), pp. 276-285.
- Menninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Wassiliwizky, E., Schindler, I., Hanich, J., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S. (2019). What are aesthetic emotions? in: Psychological Review, 126 (2), pp. 171-195.
Research topic: On the relationship between power and feature expression
"That's stretching my imagination." Is imagination a high-level capacity for visually-divergent thinking? Or is the encoding, figural, verbal, or numerical, irrelevant? Are mental powers dimensions of intellectual abilities? This project addresses the terminological question of their relationship. Contemporary academic psychology recognizes abilities and skills or traits and their expression. The term force usually does not appear and yet occasionally sneaks in, even in my own work. Often it is found on the objective side of the psychophysical dualism, for example as a strong situation, as well as a strong emotion.