DEADLINE EXTENDED: 
International Society for Research on Emotion
​July 15-18 2022, Los Angeles

Due to multiple requests, we have extended the submission deadline to November 30, 2021
 
We are now accepting submissions and pre-conference proposals for the bi-annual ISRE (International Society for Research on Emotion) conference. The conference will take place in-person on the 15-18th of July 2022 on the campus of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles USA.
 
The ISRE conference is an exciting opportunity to meet international colleagues, present your work, and to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in emotion research. ISRE members study emotions from a wide range of disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, affective computing, history, anthropology, art and design. The ISRE conference 2022 will include keynote addresses by Antonio Damasio, Barbara Fredrickson and Eran Halperin.
 
If you would like to contribute to the ISRE conference by presenting your research, we invite you to submit an abstract of max. 250 words by November 30, 2021. Submissions are welcome from scholars in all relevant disciplines for symposia (of up to four talks and a discussant, or 5 talks), individual talks, and posters. Symposia are encouraged to include more than one discipline to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchange. Upload your contribution at the ISRE 2022 conference website (http://isre22.org). Please consult the guidelines on the website before preparing your contribution as submissions are subject to blind review and there are limits on the number of submissions from a single individual.
 
If you would like to organize a pre-conference, we will be accepting proposals up until November 30, 2021. Please email a 1 page PDF proposal to the pre-conference chairs, Gale Lucas (lucas@ict.usc.edu) and Rachael Jack (Rachael.Jack@glasgow.ac.uk). Proposals should include names and affiliation of the organizers, a 400 word max description and provisional line-up of speakers and topics.
 
All abstracts will be subject to blind peer review by an international scientific committee; accepted abstracts will be published in the conference program. Notification of acceptance decisions will be communicated in February 2022. Online registration is expected to be available shortly after that.

We are looking forward to welcoming you in Los Angeles in July 2022!
 
Jonathan Gratch and Stacy Marsella
Organizers, ISRE 2022 Conference
 
Program Chairs
Agneta Fischer, University of Amsterdam
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, University of Southern California
 
Pre-conference Chairs
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow
Gale Lucas, University of Southern California
 
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Agnes Moors, KU Leuven
Andrea Scarantino, Georgia State University
Ann Frenzel, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Batja Mesquita, KU Leuven
Carien van Reekum, University of Reading
Christian von Scheve, Freie Universität Berlin
Colin Holbrook, University of California
Merced David Osher, American Institutes for Research
Desmond Ong,   National University of Singapore
Elly Konijn, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Eric Walle, University of California Merced
Erika Rosenberg, UC Davis, Center for Mind and Brain
Hillary Elfenbein, Washington University of St. Louis
Julien Deonna, University of Geneva
Karen Quigley, Northeastern University
Kobi Israelashvili, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lisanne Pauw, University of Münster
Mariska Kret, Leiden University
Nathan Consedine, University of Aukland
Olivier Luminet, Université Catholique de Louvain
Peter Kuppens, KU Leuven
Piotr Winkielman, University of California San Diego
Roger Giner-Sorolla, University of Kent
Rui Sun, University of Amsterdam
SIdney D’Mello, University of Colorado, Boulder
Stephanie Jones, Harvard University
Tobias Brosch, University of Geneva
Ursula Hess, Humbolt University
 
Career Development Chair
Tanja Wingenbach, University of Zurich
 
Submission Chairs
James Hale, University of Southern California
Tobias Thejll-Madsen, University of Glasgow
 
Website Chair
Giselle Pu, Pennsylvania State University
 
Publicity Chair
Teerawat Monnor, University of Geneva

A recent paper by Goldenberg, Weisz, Sweeny, Cikara, and Gross (2021) suggests that we might be not so good at estimating the emotion in crowds. Their research suggests that we are focusing mainly on the expressions with the highest intensity in a crowd and this might lead to overestimating how a crowd might react.

This is quite interesting - and particularly at a time when, at the time of writing, we might frequently be confronted with a situation where we are talking, while looking at grids of faces looking back at us in a Zoom meeting, or an online class. So the question is how good we are taking the affective temperature in a physical or virtual room.












However, Goldenberg and colleagues studied this question using arrays of a static face (the same face) with different expressions that were presented to participants in three different experiments.

While I believe this is interesting and timely research, I worry a bit that it is difficult to translate these findings into the real world. As I have stated elsewhere, I look at interaction in real-time a bit as if it were a dance, where the dynamic entrainment of motions is an important element of understanding how a crowd reacts - whether there is brow movement when I say something controversial or difficult, whether there is chuckling when I tell a joke, or whether there is no response to a controversial statement. In this context a good speaker is setting up an expectation as to how a crowd reacts - this is why a script for a speech sometimes contains markers to make a pause to enable applause. In that sense, the expectation becomes a feed-forward to a perceptual process that is then sensitive to deviations from that expectations - this is when, if possible, there is time for the speaker to modulate the presentation - take more time, rephrase, emphasize. It would be fun to create such environments and test then experimentally, also with an eye-tracker, as in the third study of Goldenberg et al whether there is evidence not only for the effect of very intense reactions, but also of low expressivity in the context of expecting a response that does not happen.

Goldenberg, A., Weisz, E., Sweeny, T. D., Cikara, M., & Gross, J. J. (2021). The Crowd-Emotion-Amplification Effect. Psychological Science, 32(3), 437–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620970561

A couple of my papers dealing with the dynamics of interaction

Kappas, A. (2013). Social regulation of emotion: Messy layers. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 51. (link)
Kappas, A., & Descôteaux, J. (2003). Of butterflies and roaring thunder: Nonverbal communication in interaction and regulation of emotion. In Philippot, P., Coats, E.J., & Feldman, R.S. (Eds.) Nonverbal behavior in clinical settings (pp. 45-74). New York: Oxford University Press.

Since 2014 I am Dean at Jacobs University. It has been difficult to keep up regular posting on this blog. so I made a bit of order, as many do in the times of COVID19, and deleted many of the outdated material here. More fresh material to come, real!soon!now!

Call for Papers for a Roundtable Issue on

Interdisciplinarity in Research on Emotion

Inspired by a vivid discussion in the International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE), Kodikas/ Code – Ars Semeiotica – An International Journal of Semiotics invites submissions for its roundtable issue on Interdisciplinarity in Research on Emotion.

Bringing together scholars from different disciplines across the world, ISRE’s focus on interdisciplinarity reaches back to its foundation in 1984 and has just recently been reaffirmed at its biennial conference in Berkeley (ISRE 2013). In his inaugural address, newly elected president Arvid Kappas placed emphasis on the importance of interdisciplinary research in a broad sense, interconnecting not only natural sci­ences, computer science, and engineering but also social sciences and humanities. To institutionalize this emphasis, Kappas created a Task Force on Interdisciplinarity that sparked the discussion of inter­disciplinarity among ISRE members.

Through its roundtable issue, Kodikas aims to provide an open forum for discussing the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research on emotion. In line with ISRE’s objective to facilitate re­search across decisively different fields, submissions are welcomed from scholars of all disciplines. The subject area comprises, but is not limited to:

-          opportunities, conditions, obstacles, and limits of interdisciplinary research on emotion,

-          epistemological questions of interdisciplinary research on emotion,

-          interdisciplinarity and affective computing,

-          interdisciplinarity regarding research on emotion in contexts of practical application,

-          a historiography of research on emotion within and across traditional discourse boundaries,

-          micro studies or ethnographies of interdisciplinary research on emotion,

-          interdisciplinarity, internationality, and culture,

-          communication, symbolic systems, and misunderstanding in interdisciplinary research on emotion,

-          interdisciplinarity, reputation, and academic careers,

-          interdisciplinary research on emotion and academic education,

-          organizing, managing, and institutionalizing interdisciplinary research on emotion, and

-          administrative and scholarly views on interdisciplinary research on emotion.

The issue’s roundtable format grants contributors the opportunity to comment with a maximum of 1000 words on the other authors’ contributions. These comments will be published in the same issue.

A journal of semiotics that promotes the interdisciplinary research characteristic of semiotics, Kodikas is keen to witness how scholars communicatively make sense of emotion as a subject within and across individual disciplines. Authors are thus encouraged to address the subject from their own points of view and not bound to a semiotic angle.

Manuscripts should be between 4000 and 7500 words in length and formatted in accordance with the Kodikas Style Sheet. The deadline for paper submission (including an abstract of up to 200 words) is June 30, 2014. Submissions and requests for further details may be directed to guest editor Robin Kurilla (robin.kurilla@uni-due.de).

Website: Kodikas/Code – Ars Semeiotica – An International Journal of Semiotics

Editors: Prof. Dr. Achim Eschbach, Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich, and Prof. (em.) Dr. Jürgen Trabant

I just come back from the biannual meeting of the International Society for Research on Emotions (ISRE), which was held at UC Berkeley in August. The conference was, as always, inspiring. Meetings like this are important at many different levels. There are formal presentations, for example. However, there are also many informal exchanges with members which touch on many different issues. A copy of the program can be found here.

However, this particular meeting was of special significance for me as I was elected president of the society. I took over from Prof. W. Gerrod Parrott who shepherded the society into a period of growth and stability. My term will be for a duration of two years. In this time I will try to help the society grow and prosper. I will also occasionally use this platform to link forth and back between society business and my regular blog.

In 2010 I was already once a guest in the Große Show der Naturwunder mit Frank Elstner und Ranga Yogeshwar ... and on July 11, 2013, there was a second one. This is a wonderful show that bridges science and education in a game format where some well-known contestants answer questions about science and technology.

This time, I was involved as an expert on visual perception and specifically faces. The show is available online for a few more days and you can check it out here.  Note that the show is in German, and the segment starts at 1:08:30 ... 

 More soon,

Enjoy!

Here is some related literature:

Olk, B. & Kappas, A. (2011). Eye tracking technology as a tool for visual research. In E. Margolis, & L. Pauwels (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods (pp. 433-451). London: SAGE Publications.


Kappas, A., & Olk, B. (2008). The concept of visual competence as seen from the psychological and brain sciences. Visual Studies, 23, 162-173. doi:10.1080/14725860802276313

Today, Earth welcomes back Cmdr Chris Hadfield who touched many people, not only Canadians with his tweets and Youtube videos from board of the International Space Station (ISS). One of the last things Cmdr Hadfield did was to post a very cool  rendition of David Bowie's Space Oddity. The music was recorded on earth and the singing on board of the ISS. The text is slightly altered from the original and rarely has this song been so relevant than here with Cmdr Hadfield leaving the ISS just a few hours later - looking one last time at Earth from that perspective ...

I must admit, it brought a few tears to my eyes. The video was powerful - the music has so many associations for me, it was a particular moment in time that would never come back (you can do something for the first time only once). So why were there tears? 

Crying has been one of the interesting riddles - what is the function of crying? What is the evolutionary perspective on crying? Is crying good for you or bad for you?

As it turns out, there are no easy answers. Darwin already was not completely sure what do with crying. Quote from Darwin (1872)

So the idea here is that forceful crying in the infant leads via mechanical reasons to the secretion of tears. Over time particular situations get associated with this type of fit, which in turn gets more and more controlled in the adult and so crying when adults are sad is a sort of remnant of this process. You can read the argument in more detail here.

Since then many researchers have studied the mechanics and chemistry of crying and tears. It is still a complicated story though ... is it satisfying? Can it cope with sentimental crying? What about crying for joy?

One of the key researchers on crying is Ad Vingerhoets from Tilburg University. Here is a brief article from the Guardian that refers also to Ad's recent book Why only humans weep.

I have also tried my hand at the topic, but then - Ad's books are probably the best place to start ...

In the meanwhile - Cmdr Hadfield answers the question what happens to tears in space ...

References

Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. London, UK: Murray.

Kappas, A. (2009). Mysterious tears. The phenomenon of crying from the perspective of social neuroscience. In: Thorsten Fögen (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-Roman World (pp. 419-438) , Berlin & New York,: DeGruyter.

I decided to start a second blog that focuses on Affective Computing. It is called Affective Computing Science and it will be a bit more technical and also contain links and or comments in that special field.

The ironic thing is of course that I do not have enough time for this blog, but then ... it is a challenge ... :-)

This will focus on making machines more emotional or deal in more intelligent ways with human emotions. Check it out ...