Emotion & Social Relations
- +44 (0) 1865 271444 (fax +44 (0) 1865 310447)
- esrgoxford@gmail.com
Founded in 2001
Involved in 7 international and national collaborative projects since 2003
Team leader is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press book series: Emotion and social interaction, author of "Heart to Heart: How Your Emotions Affect Other People" (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and co-author of "Emotion and Social Relations: Cultural, Group, and Interpersonal Processes" (Psychology Press, 2005).
Prof. Brian Parkinson
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Brian Parkinson
The Emotion and Social Relations Research Group is based at the Department of Experimental Psychology in the University of Oxford and is led by Professor Brian Parkinson and Dr Danielle Shore. The group consists of postgraduate students, visiting students and researchers who all have at least one topic in common: EMOTION. 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.
Our research spans a range of topics concerning the ways that emotions operate in social contexts. We use a variety of methods including social media analysis, observation and facial action coding, and eye-tracking in addition to diaries and questionnaires. Key themes include the social functions and effects of emotional expression and behaviour and the ways that other people regulate our emotions and the emotional effects of this kind of interpersonal emotion regulation. Our research also addresses how emotions operate in intragroup and intergroup contexts and how group members perceive the emotions of ingroup and outgroup members. For example, current and recent studies address the following questions:
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Emotion regulation and cooperation: How do people regulate their facial expressions to elicit trust?
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Emotion diffusion in social media: Do negative emotions spread further on Twitter? If so, why?
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Group-dependent meta-perception of emotion: Are ingroup and outgroup emotions perceived differently?
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Composer-to-listener emotion transmission: When and how does music affect our emotions?
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Effects of social sharing of emotion: When and why does talking about negative experiences help?
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Distinguishing negative social emotions: What’s different about hate, anger and dislike?
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Smile perception in context: Are smiles perceived the same way across situations?
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Relation alignment theory: How and why do emotions exert social influence?
Our team
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Brian Parkinson
Professor of Social Psychology
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Danielle Shore
Deputy Research Director of Clinical Psychology Training and Research
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Samuel Day
DPhil Candidate
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Yiran Ge
DPhil Candidate
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Peter Varga
DPhil Candidate
Current Projects
Effects of emotion regulation on co-operation and trust (Brian Parkinson and Danielle Shore)
Alumni
- Gwenda Simons
- Dragos Petrescu
- Ilmo van der Lowe
- Simon Lutterbie
- Claudia Marinetti
- Penny Moore
- Janice Sanchez
- Laura Taylor
- Paton Yam
- Swati Kanoi
- Natasha Phiri
- Luka Katic
ESRG News
Brian Parkinson's 2019 book "Heart to Heart: How Your Emotions Affect Other People" (2019, CUP) was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Title” in Choice magazine’s 2020 list.
Brian Parkinson took over as one of three joint editors in chief of the journal Emotion Review in 2022.
Research Vacancies
Prospective graduate students who are interested in applying to join the group may contact Dr Danielle Shore at danielle.shore@psy.ox.ac.uk. Professor Brian Parkinson will not be supervising further graduate students from 2024 onwards.