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.

SocialFoundationsLabImage1

Our team

Robert Hepach

Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology
Marlene Försterling

DPhil Candidate
Clemens Von Wulffen

DPhil Candidate
Darko Stojilović

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.

Our Current Lab Members

Robert Hepach - Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology

Robert Hepach

Robert child

I am a developmental psychologist who studies social cognition and motivation in early ontogeny from the first year of life to school-age: How young children’s understanding of the social world shapes their own behaviour to initiate, maintain, and repair cooperative relationships with others.

Together with my colleagues we have designed integrative experimental paradigms that allow us to assess children’s internal states and subtle emotional expressions while they engage with their peers in naturalistic study designs. We use eye tracking, pupillometry, and depth sensor imaging to capture the internal mechanisms that underlie young children’s (pro)social motivation.

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

Marlene Försterling

marlene child

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 Von Wulffen - DPhil Candidate

Clemens v. Wulffen

Clemens child

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.

megan adult

Megan Groombridge

megan child

My research interests are centred around paediatric development. I graduated from the University of Oxford in 2024 with a 1st in Experimental Psychology, before working as a research assistant for paediatric neuroimaging in Clinical Neurosciences. Outside of academia, sport has always been a big part of my life. I have competed in athletics and football, and currently coach a girls football team.

My project aims to investigate the relationship between mental health and sport injuries in adolescents. In particular, I aim to elucidate and validate psychosocial and physiological mechanisms that may underlie this relationship. By incorporating objective measures, such as wearables and brain imaging, I ultimately aim to improve understanding of how mental health may impact injury risk in adolescent athletes.

Darko Stojilović - DPhil Candidate

Darko Stojilović

darko child

I am a DPhil researcher in Experimental Psychology, supervised by Robert Hepach and Joanna Demaree-Cotton, and funded by the Clarendon Fund and the Oxford Department of Experimental Psychology.

My research investigates moral interactions between human agents and fully autonomous AI agents from a developmental perspective. By combining randomised controlled experiments with ecologically valid designs, I aim to trace the developmental trajectory of moral responsibility, and predict the potential shifts in moral reasoning and social norms resulting from extended interaction with AI.

I graduated with an MSc graduate from UCL’s Experimental Psychology department, where I studied with the support of the Chevening Scholarship. My work has been published in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Collabra: Psychology, and Nature: Scientific Data. I have presented at several international conferences, including CogSci24, the 9th International Conference on Computational Social Science, and the AI UK 23 conference.

previous Lab Members

Amelia Rock	Research Assistant & current DPhil student
Cora Alina Blau	Research Assistant & DPhil student
Louisa Huff	Visiting PhD student

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