The Emotion & Self Lab
In the Emotion and Self Lab at the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, we study the evolutionary function, nonverbal expression, and psychological structure of emotions and self. Much of our research is focused on the place that self and emotions meet: the self-conscious emotions of pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. But we also study more basic level emotions linked to moral behavior, like disgust, as well as other complex social emotions, like humility and schadenfreude. We use a wide range of methods to study emotional processes, including behavioral observation and coding, social-cognitive techniques (e.g., reaction time assessment, eye-tracking), cross-cultural and cross-species comparisons, narrative assessment, and physiological (e.g., hormone) assessment; and we use experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal designs. In an effort to improve the study of self-conscious emotions, we have developed several measurement tools that are available to other researchers. These tools can be downloaded from this website. In all of our research, we tend to take a functionalist perspective, asking why questions about emotions and self, and seeking both ultimate and proximate answers.
Featured Media »
Taking ginger pills can make disgusting ideas more palatable.
Francesco Carta / Getty
By Sam Wong
We often say our sense of morality is guided by our gut feelings – and this may be truer than we realise. A set of experiments using the anti-nausea powers of ginger have provided the strongest evidence yet that bodily sensations play a key role in some of our moral judgements.
Previous studies have reported that the more disgusted people feel, the more wrong they judge moral infractions to be. However, it’s not clear whether feelings of disgust guide moral judgements, or if it …
Read the full article in the New Scientist here >>
Why We Shouldn’t Be Too Modest
Pride is the downfall of many a tragic hero. Mr Darcy has to let his go before he can earn Elizabeth Bennet’s love. Dante listed it as one of the seven deadly sins. And as the famous (and oft-misquoted) verse from Proverbs cautions us, it “goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.
There’s no question about it: we’re consistently told that pride makes us obnoxious at best and doomed at worst.
But pride may not entirely deserve this reputation as a destructive force. There’s new evidence that this emotion has an evolutionary function, and that it plays an important role in the way that we interact with the world....
Read the full article in BBC Future here >>
Why Does Every Soccer Player Do This? Psychology Has the Answer.
Goals in soccer games can be few and far between, which helps explain the delirious nature of most scoring celebrations. Some players yank off their jerseys or drop to their knees and glide across the turf in glee. They all often end up at the bottom of a pile of jubilant teammates.
Then there are the players who are presented with a goal-scoring opportunity and, for whatever reason, fail. When this happens, they all do the same thing: raise their hands and place them on their heads — apparently the universal gesture to signify, How in the world did I miss that?
...
The gesture signifies that “you know you messed up,” said Jessica Tracy, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. “It’s going to tell others, ‘I get it and I’m sorry, therefore you don’t have to kick me out of the group, you don’t have to kill me.’”
Read the full New York Times article here >>
Featured Project »
How are Emotion Expression Honest Signals?
Emotion expressions can be understood as a form of social communication between a sender and a receiver: a signal. [...]
Read more »The Emergence of Status Hierarchies
Status differences are universal in all known human societies, and they partially determine patterns of resource allocation, conflict, mating, and group coordination. However, there’s little systematic research into questions of why and how hierarchies emerge. [...]
Read more »Latest News »
Our new paper – led by Zak Witkower- providing the first evidence for distinct nonverbal displays of dominance and prestige now in press at JPSP!
Now in press at Psychological Science: Zak and Jess’ paper demonstrating that head tilt functions as an action-unit imposter, dramatically changing the way that a neutral face is perceived
Pharmacologically inhibiting physiological disgust (i.e., nausea) reduces the severity of moral judgments in the purity domain. Check out our paper, now published at JPSP.
Check out our paper just published at Evolution and Human Behavior for real-world evidence that status displays reduce, rather than increase, the amount of financial aid needy individuals receive. Supporting Trivers’ model of reciprocal altruism, generous folks bias their efforts toward those who convey greater need.
Jess’ book, Pride: The Secret to Success, is now available in paperback!
Upcoming Talks »
Jess Tracy, “The Form, Function, and Adaptive Nature of the Pride and Shame Nonverbal Displays”
Keynote Address, SPSP Pre-conference on Nonverbal Behavior
February 7th, 2019
Portland, OR
Zak Witkower, It’s all in your head: Head position changes the perception of facial expressions of emotion
Nonverbal Behavior Pre-Conference, SPSP
Portland, OR
February 7, 2019
Zak Witkower, ”Two signals of rank: Distinct displays of dominance and prestige,” in the symposium, “New insights into the nonverbal communication of social rank” at the annual SPSP meeting
February 9, 2019
Portland, OR
Jess Tracy, “Hot sh*t or piece of sh*t: The directly opposing impact of pride displays on social judgments and decision-making,” in the symposium, “Nonverbal Expressions of Positive Emotion: New Advances and Social Functions,” SPSP Annual Meeting
February 10th (11 am-12:15)
Portland, OR
