Social Foundations

Dr Robert Hepach

MAIN RESEARCH FOCUS

Prosocial motivations and behaviours that foster social connection and sustain relationships develop early in childhood and support lifelong health outcomes. We study the developmental origins of the psychological mechanisms underlying young children's and young people's helping, sharing, comforting, and cooperation.

Our goal is to better understand how emotions regulate social interactions toward cooperative ends. Our methods include eye tracking, pupillometry, behavioural observations, and posture gait analyses using depth sensor imaging. We are particularly interested in studying how the motivations for specific prosocial behaviours such as instrumental helping change across development. For example, in one line or work we were interested in how children’s intrinsic motivations to help others develop to incorporate strategic motivations to build cooperative relationships with others (Hepach, Engelmann, et al., 2023).

One aspiration of our research programme is to improve children’s and young people’s lives by making their social interactions more rewarding and their relationships more cooperative and meaningful.

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Our team

Robert Hepach

Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology
Marlene Försterling

DPhil Candidate
Clemens Von Wulffen

DPhil Candidate

CURRENT PROJECTS

Expressions of prosocial emotions

We are interested in how children express (pro)social emotions such as pride, shame, guilt, but also joy. To this end we design studies that allow us to capture the expression of emotions in children as young as 2 to 3 years. One line of work led by Marlene Försterling uses OpenPose and depth sensor imaging technology to measure postural elevation and how this reflects positive and negative emotional experience.

Relevant publications:

Försterling, M., Gerdemann, S., Parkinson, B., & Hepach, R. (2024). Exploring the expression of emotions in children’s body posture using OpenPose. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 46). [Link to the paper]

Försterling, M., Hepach, R., & Rottman, J. (2023). Context matters in myriad ways: a reply to ‘Building a cooperative child: evidence and lessons cross-culturally’ by Tanya Broesch and Erin Robbins. Global Discourse, 13(3-4), 435-441.

Emotions in childhood Project

We are currently engaged in a unique collaboration with Gameloft and Ferrero Int. to create a knowledge database featuring research on emotions in childhood. This is featured on a website for children and their caretakers. We have worked together with our partners to integrate some of this educational content within an app-based gamified experience that children can play together with the caretakers. The launch of this game on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App store is scheduled for October 2024. We have co-designed the game with our partners to feature educational elements to encourage conversations between children and their caretakers about feelings and emotions in everyday life.

Lab Members

Marlene Försterling

BSc Psychology, MSc in Psychological Research Marlene Försterling - DPhil Candidate

My research addresses affective mechanisms underlying prosocial development in children. For my DPhil, I use body posture measurements as an indicator of valence of affect, and aim to validate a novel method for pose detection. With the help of this paradigm, I investigate both motivational effects of moral emotions such as elevation, as well as inter-personal aspects of prosocial behaviour and emotions.

The DPhil is supervised by Professor Robert Hepach, and Professor Brian Parkinson as second supervisor, and is funded by a Kellogg Progress Scholarship (Kellogg College, University of Oxford). Prior to my DPhil, I obtained a BSc in Psychology from LMU Munich, awarded with the LMU research price for excellent students, and worked at the TUM Neuroimaging Center as a research assistant. I obtained an MSc in Psychological Research at the University of Oxford, where I started to work on body posture and prosocial behaviour.

Clemens v. Wulffen

Clemens Von Wulffen - DPhil Candidate

I am a DPhil student supervised by Professor Robert Hepach and Professor Asifa Majid. My project aims to investigate the development of emotion understanding.

Before joining Oxford, I completed an MSc at the University of Glasgow and an MPhil at the University of Cambridge. I have gained valuable research experience as a research assistant at several institutions. At the University of Zurich and the Psychiatric University Hospital, I worked with Professor Birgit Kleim and Associate Professor Marta Marciniak on a digital mental health intervention focused on cognitive reappraisal. At the University of Munich, I assisted Professor Ophelia Deroy and Dr. Jimena Zapata with behavioural experiments investigating moral and social judgements. At the University of Leiden, I worked with Professor Mariska Kret, Dr. Tom Roth, Dr. Yena Kim, and Dr. Juan Olvido Perea Garcia on experimental studies with orangutans and bonobos.

Cora Alina Blau

Alina Blau

I am a DPhil student in the Department of Education, supervised by Professor Liam Gearon and Professor Maia Chankseliani. My research focuses on value education at the university level. My research is funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Prior to my DPhil, I obtained a BA in History and Political Science from LMU Munich and an MA in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University, which was fully funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst)

Amelia Rock

I am a research assistant working across Professor Robert Hepach’s Social Foundations Lab and Professor Dejan Draschkow’s Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition Lab. My work primarily focusses on using immersive virtual technologies to investigate human behaviour. I am currently working on a project using virtual reality to investigate the development and motivations underpinning prosociality in children. I am also assisting on a project combining virtual reality and EEG to investigate neural and behavioural mechanisms of naturalistic behaviour in adults. I also oversee recruitment strategies in the Social Foundations Lab. I completed my undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in 2024. Prior to my current role, I worked as a research assistant in Professor Kia Nobre’s Brain and Cognition Lab and Professor Kate Watkin’s Speech, Brain, and Language Group. I have experience with MEG, MRI, EEG, and eye-tracking technology.

I am particularly interested in research methods which probe the underlying mechanisms of naturalistic human behaviour, such as how different cognitive processes, including working memory and attention, are flexibly coordinated to navigate the challenges of a dynamic and complex world.

Louisa Huff

I am a PhD student at Leipzig University, under the supervision of Juniorprofessor Sebastian Grüneisen and Professor Henrik Saalbach. In the context of a project funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), I am also conducting research at the University of Oxford under Professor Robert Hepach’s supervision and at the University of Virginia as part of Professor Amrisha Vaish’s lab.

My research concerns the social factors that have the potential to obstruct young children’s norm enforcement. Specifically, I am investigating how children may come to engage in unequal norm enforcement out of prosocial and cooperative motivations to reciprocate favours, associate with their social group, and collaborate with others. In a current project, I am also assessing the contribution of social emotions to these effects.

Having completed a B. Sc. in Psychology at Hamburg University in 2019 and an M. Sc. in Early Childhood Research at Leipzig University in 2021, I began my work as a PhD student at Leipzig University in 2022. The DAAD-funded project involves 5 months each at the University of Oxford and the University of Virginia.

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