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 »
The Feelings Lab Episode 2: Embarrassment
Check out Jess' feature on the second episode The Feelings Lab podcast, where she discusses the feeling of embarrassment alongside Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Matt Forte, and Ali Kolbert!
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The Action-Unit Imposter Effect
Check out media coverage of our recent paper, published in Psychological Science, showing that a downward head tilt leads to increased perceptions of dominance, due to illusory facial muscle activity.
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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 >>
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 »
Jess Tracy was awarded the 2021 Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Career Trajectory Award.
German version of the Authentic and Hubristic Pride scales now published in European Journal of Psychological Assessment.
Now in press at JEP:G: People high in hubristic pride engage in strategic dishonesty when faced with a status threat–if their dishonest behaviour might help them get ahead.
Joey Cheng, Jess Tracy, and Joe Henrich challenge Durkee and colleagues (2020) on the basis of social rank in human societies — now in press at PNAS.
Which comes first–feelings of pride that motivate social rank attainment, or rises in social rank that lead to feelings of pride? Check out Zak Witkower, Eric Mercadante, and Jess Tracy’s new paper in press at SPPS for the answer!
Our review of over a decade of work from the lab on pride and social hierarchy, now published at Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Upcoming Talks »
Jess Tracy, “Two Paths to Power: A Decade of Research on Dominance and Prestige.” Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Meeting
San Francisco, CA
February 17-19, 2022
Jess Tracy, “Reciprocal relations between emotions and moral thought.”
Workshop on emotions and morality, University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel. May, 2022… hopefully!