Dr. Dennis Küster
I am a postdoctoral fellow for the EU-FP7 project EMOTE. My research interests revolve around the topic of emotions from a variety of angles, including: Psychophysiology of emotions, contextual and social factors influencing emotion expression, the interplay between nonverbal emotional cues such as tears or body posture with facial activity, affect sensing in Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI, e.g., using FACET), expression of emotions in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI), methods of emotion assessment, and emotion elicitation (e.g., images, videos, sounds, feedback). These types of studies frequently include validation experiments in the context of HRI/HCI, or the comparison of laboratory measures with new contact-free or wireless devices (e.g., Microsoft Kinect, Affectiva Q-Sensor, Empatica E4, Movisens). In a previous EU-FP7-project (Cyberemotions), I have further been involved with sentiment detection for online materials using automated measures.
More recently, I have become particularly interested in the impact of emotion-related facial events such as tears and blushing on the perception of emotions as well as person perception. Across these different types of topics, I study emotions from an appraisal perspective, and a common theme is the issue of how social context affects emotional processing at multiple levels. For this, I am using various measures and paradigms that can include subjective report, response time sensitive measures (e.g., the Implicit Association Test), or analyses at the level of texts written by participants (for Cyberemotions).
You will find my contact information here.
Dr. Elena Tsankova
I am a postdoctoral fellow to Prof. Dr. Arvid Kappas working on person and face perception. I am especially interested in the formation of first impressions of trustworthiness and in my dissertation I have looked at various factors influencing these impressions. Between September 2009 and September 2012 I was involved in the EU project CyberEmotions where I assisted with the collection and analysis of human psychophysiological data. As a result of my involvement in CyberEmotions I also developed an interest in nonverbal communication and information exchange in the context of online social media. Between September 2012 and October 2013 I was employed by the EU project eCUTE where I performed statistical analyses and helped with the preparation of manuscripts for submission to peer reviewed journals. Since Spring 2014 I have been teaching the undergraduate psychology course Social Neuroscience at Jacobs University. Currently, I am following up on the research line on trustworthiness perception I started in my dissertation and I am looking to gain experience in preparing grant applications. I also maintain our team’s website.
You will find my contact information here and my ResearchGate profile here.