The Emotion and Social Relations Research Group is based at the Department of Experimental Psychology in the University of Oxford.

Although emotions are often seen as private states, it is clear that they can also affect and be affected by other people.  Our research group investigates emotions in relational contexts (including both interpersonal and group settings), as processes that are co-ordinated with other people’s emotions and behaviour.  For example, current and recent studies address the following questions:

                                                                                                             Photo Credit: Via Tsuji

• Are emotions such as anger and guilt fully explained by personal appraisals concerning blame, or do they also depend on the perceived and anticipated reactions of other people?                                                                                                  
  

• How is our own anxiety affected when we notice that someone else is anxious too (emotion contagion or social appraisal)?

• Does discussing and working over your worries with partners or close friends (co-rumination) make you feel better or worse?

• Does people’s inability to predict their own emotional reactions accurately also extend to their predictions of other people’s emotional reactions (interpersonal affect forecasting)?

• When and why do we overestimate how visible our emotional expressions are to other people (illusion of transparency)?

We investigate these questions using a range of methods including laboratory and field experiments, analysis of video-recordings of staged and naturalistic interactions, and diary methods (time-sampling).

If you would like more information about the Emotion and Social Relations Research Group,

or about joining the lab, please email socpsychox@gmail.com

Emotion and Social Relations Research Group

Department of Experimental Psychology
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3UD, UK