Main Research Interests

Emotions, specifically Expressive Behavior and Psychophysiological Responses in
Social Context

Visual Communication of Emotions (e.g., Perception of Facial Expressions of
Emotions; Mediated Communication; Press Photography)

Communication of Emotions over the Internet

Interaction with Robots and Avatars

The Impact of Information Processing (Appraisals) on Human Emotions
Research Activities
UNCANNY VALLEY: While interaction with non-living creatures used to be a matter of myth
(e.g., the Golem, Zombies) or fiction (e.g., Frankenstein’s creature in Shelley’s novel in 1818, or robots in Čapek’s play R.U.R. in 1921), we are now surrounded by avatars, robots, and
CGI characters (computer generated imagery) in the media and they have become a very real aspect of everyday life in work and play. As research groups and commercial enterprises are devoting increasing amounts of time and money in developing ever more intelligent and realistic agents, it is interesting to note that only a very small subset of these entities, whether they are embodied, as in the shape of robots, or virtual, as in the guise of CGI agents, are trying to appear fully human. Instead, avatars or film characters might emphasize caricaturelike features on humanoid faces, robots might resemble pets, or bipeds with featureless faces.
One reason for the reluctance to build realistic artificial humans, be it embodied or virtual, is the so called uncanny valley effect – as these entities become almost human, they appear to elicit strong feelings of unease and alienation. Together with Thalia Wheatley at Dartmouth
College I conduct research targeted at understanding why this effect occurs and in the process try to understand how human processes such as empathy are implemented in the brain. In one line of this research we create artificial stimuli that are blends between human and artificial (see figure 1).
Figure 1.
Example of a morphed continuum from human to artificial created in the context of the collaboration with Wheatley on the "uncanny valley" effect.

PERCEIVING PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY: Preparation of grant proposal: Perceiving Press
Photography to DFG with Marion G. Müller and Bettina Olk. In this context several experiments were conducted to provide pilot data for the grant. How do complex pressphotographs compare to standardized emotion-eliciting stimuli, such as photographs from the
International Affective Picture System (IAPS, Lang et al. 2005)
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Positive Neutral Negative PPP
Figure 2.
Ratings of valence and arousal on 9-point scales of 18 selected images from the
International Affective Picture System (Lang et al. 2005) and the 5 photographs used in pilot study 1 (yellow diamonds). Based on the data of 14 participants. The index numbers correspond to internal image identification codes.
CYBEREMOTIONS: Preparation of grant proposal in the context of the: European Union ’s 7 th
Framework Programme: Future and emerging technologies Objectives: ICT-2007.8.4 Science of complex systems for socially intelligent ICT. "CYBEREMOTIONS: Collective Emotions in
Cyberspace" with partners in Poland (Warsaw University of Technology, Centre of Excellence for Complex Systems Research; Gemius SA, online research agency), Switzerland (Ecole
Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne, Virtual Reality Lab; ETH Zürich, (Department of
Management, Technology, and Economics ), Austria (Österreichische Studiengesellschaft für
Kybernetik), the UK (University of Wolverhampton, School of Computing and IT, Statistical
Cybermetrics Research Group), Slovenia (Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Department of
Theoretical Physics) and Germany (TU Berlin, Faculty of Computer Science, IKM Research
Group).
Funded Projects
 Grossgeräteantrag "stereoscopic immersive workbench (holobench)", in collaboration with colleagues of the School of Engineering and Science and School of Humanities and Social Science, Jacobs University Bremen, funded by the German Research
Foundation (DFG), 2008
Other Professional Activities


Associate editor of Emotion (American Psychological Association); Biological
Psychology (Elsevier)
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Member of editorial board of Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (Springer)

Editorial board of advisors of Cognition and Emotion (Taylor & Francis)

Editorial consultant for British Journal of Social Psychology (British Psychological
Society)
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Board of Advisors The Centre for the Study of Emotion, University of Portsmouth

Reviews for further numerous journals, books, and international funding agencies

Active member of several international scientific organizations; Charter member of the
Association for Psychological Science; Fellow of the International Organization for
Psychophysiology
PhD-Students
Dennis Küster
The relationship between emotional experience, social context, and the face: An investigation of processes underlying facial activity
Defense: December 2007