Emotions are present in almost every moment of our daily lives, adding colour to our experience of the world. Emotions can range from mild enjoyment or annoyance–often triggered by everyday pleasures or hassles, to intense joy or sadness–usually in response to more momentous events. Although emotions have traditionally been defined as very brief, psychologists are discovering that they can last anywhere from seconds to hours or days. While our emotions are often very helpful, at times we also seek to control and manage how and when our emotions unfold. This ability to regulate emotions is thought to be critical to health and well-being.
Scientists studying emotions are only beginning to understand the complexities of how emotions function in daily life. Although important discoveries have been made in the lab, we don't know how much these findings apply to how people experience and manage their emotions in the "real world". The FEEL Lab aims to discover how emotions function in the rich and complex environments we encounter in our daily lives.
FEEL Lab Talks
Videos of talks and presentations by FEEL Lab members. Please select the title below each image to view the YouTube video.
Check out our FEEL Lab Spotify playlist!
News
Current Members
- Dr Peter Koval
Co-director of Lab
He/him
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Katie Greenaway
Co-director of Lab
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Elise Kalokerinos
Co-director of Lab
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Ella Moeck
Postdoctoral Fellow
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Tony Gutentag
Postdoctoral Fellow
She/her
University of Toronto & Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Sarah O'Brien
Lab Manager
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
PhD Students
- Valentina Bianchi
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
bianchiv@student.unimelb.edu.au
Valentina's research focuses on secrecy processes in everyday life, emotion and emotion regulation, social connectedness as well as meta-science. Valentina is also a Senior Clinical Psychologist and holds academic interests across clinical and social psychology, having completed Master degrees in both areas (University of Padova and Deakin University).
- Anh Tran
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
hoanganht@student.unimelb.edu.au
Anh's research focuses on interpersonal emotion regulation - why and how we influence our own and other's emotions in social contexts. A Master of Applied Psychology graduate from the University of Melbourne, she is also interested in translating research findings into actionable insights to solve practical problems.
- Rachel Freeman-Robinson
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
freemanr1@student.unimelb.edu.au
Rachel is interested in how attention, acceptance, and effort influence emotion regulation. She is also a tutor in research methods and social psychology at the University of Melbourne.
- Aya Uchida
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences & Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Psychology
aya.uchida@student.unimelb.edu.au
Aya's research is interested in how and why individuals and cultures differ in emotion regulation and the role of motivation in emotion regulation.
- Yixia Zheng
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
2022 Honours Students
- Akshay Chandran (he/him)
- James Teague (he/him)
- Janine Griffiths (she/her)
- Patrick Davies (he/him)
- Namwon (Kate) Kim (she/her)
- Ankita Sen (she/her)
- Julian Weiner-Angelopulo (he/him)
- Jessica Lee (she/her)
- Hepbyrne Davies (she/her)
- Belinda Dalton (she/her)
Research Interns / visiting students
- Beth Clarke (she/her)
- Skye Burney (she/her)
- Isobel Moore (she/her)
Past Members
2021
- Hayley Medland (PhD and Clinical Masters Student)
- Paul Garrett
- Jack Woods (Honours student)
- Kristina Mei (Honours student)
- Joanne (Jo) Kostopoulos (Honours student)
- Yehudi (Hudi) Saling (Honours student)
- Lachlan Raymond Bagnara (Honours student)
- Komal Grewal (Honours student)
- Dr Bill Bingley (Research assistant)
- Xin Yi (Sydnei) Yang (Research Intern)
- Jasmin Kaur Sareen (Research Intern)
- Sophie Warner (Research Intern)
- Amy Bowring (Research Intern)
2020
- Annabelle Patten (Honours student)
- Emma McIntosh (Honours student)
- Lachlan Anthony (Honours student)
- Melissa Petrolo (Honours student)
- Rachel Sobel (Honours student)
- Tammy Lim (Honours student)
- Christine Beckett (Research intern)
- Patrick Burnett (Research intern)
- Nicholas Cheng (Research intern and Honours student)
- Dominik Kristen-Parsch (Research intern)
- Harry Speagle (Research intern)
- Sophie Yeung (Research intern)
2019
- Amani Nasarudin (Honours student)
- Jardine Louise Mitchell (Honours student)
- Jessica Mortlock (Honours student)
- Sylvia Chu Lin (Honours student)
- Bruce McIntyre (Research intern)
- Steven Leu (Research intern)
- Julia Schreiber (Visiting Master's student)
- Yaoxi Shi (Visiting Master's student)
2018
- Jordan Hinton (Research Assistant and Lab Manager). Now at the Australian Catholic University
- Ami Mane (Honours student)
- Aamna Shah (Honours student)
- Khai Shin Lee (Honours student)
- Ann Ee Ching (Honours student)
- Sarah Paling (Visiting Master’s student)
- Orsi Benke (Visiting Master’s student)
- David Mussoff (Research intern)
- Stephanie Au Yeung (Research intern)
2017
- Hon Chung (Tommy) Choi (Honours student)
- Tim Reynolds (Honours student)
Furry Friends of the FEEL Lab
External Collaborators
- Professor James Gross
Stanford University
Professor James Gross
James J. Gross received his B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is Professor of Psychology at Stanford and Director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. His research focuses on emotion and emotion regulation, and this research employs both experimental and individual-difference methods. His teaching includes introductory psychology as well as advanced seminars on emotion and emotion regulation.
- Professor Peter Kuppens
KU Leuven
University of Leuven
Professor Peter Kuppens
Peter Kuppens is Professor in the Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences at KU Leuven, Belgium. Peter's research focuses on componential (e.g., appraisal) theories of emotions, individual differences in emotional appraisal, experience, and dynamics and their relationships with personality and well-being, and formal models for contextualised personality and emotion research.
- Associate Professor Tom Hollenstein
Queen's University, Canada
Associate Professor Tom Hollenstein
Tom Hollenstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Canada. Tom's research examines socioemotional development, particularly in adolescence. Specifically, Tom's research focuses on the regulation of emotion as evidenced by changes in self-reported feelings, autonomic psychophysiology, and behavioural expressions. Tom is also active in developing and applying methods for the analysis of change, including state space grids (www.statespacegrids.org).
- Professor Maya Tamir
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professor Maya Tamir
Professor Maya Tamir is the Chair of the Psychology Department and the director of the Emotion and Self-Regulation Laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an expert in emotion and emotion regulation. Her research examines motivational factors in emotion regulation and their implications for social and psychological functioning.
- Professor John Gleeson
Australian Catholic University
Professor John Gleeson
John Gleeson is Professor and Head of the School of Psychology at the Australian Catholic University. John is a clinical psychologist with 20 years experience in severe mental health problems. His research interests include psychological treatments in youth with psychosis, the use of moderated on-line social interventions for youth with mental health problems, and experience sampling methods in the understanding of anxiety and mood problems.
- Associate Professor Renee Thompson
Washington University
Associate Professor Renee Thompson
Renee Thompson’s research centers on understanding the everyday emotional experience in individuals diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. She is principal investigator of the Emotion and Mental Health Lab. Thompson uses multi-method approaches, including ecological momentary assessment, to examine affective instability and other temporal dynamics of emotional experience. She is also interested in how components of emotion regulation (e.g., emotional awareness) and interpersonal factors (e.g., perceived rejection) affect the emotional experience of depressed, anxious, and healthy samples.
- Associate Professor Michael Slepian
Columbia Business School
Associate Professor Michael Slepian
Michael studies the psychology of secrets and how keeping secrets affect variables that govern social and organizational life, particularly trust and motivation. He has studied the consequences of keeping secrets, including how they change our behavior, judgments and actions. He studies the effects of both personal and professional secrets for the individual secret keeper as well as whether we can tell when others are concealing information from us.
Current Projects
- Emotional and Social Experiences During Lockdown
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers have tried to balance the effectiveness of lockdowns with their potential mental health costs. Yet, two years into the pandemic, we are still lacking solid evidence about the social and emotional impact of lockdowns. Using two experience-sampling datasets collected during Melbourne’s fifth and sixth lockdowns in 2021, we investigated how people’s emotional (Project 1) and social (Project 2) functioning compared on days in vs. out of lockdown. We find that lockdowns took a mildly negative emotional toll and did not drastically impair people’s social lives. Our data suggest that either people are resilient to the challenges lockdowns pose to emotional and social well-being, that lockdown does not severely compound the overall effects of the pandemic, or both.
For details of Project 1—The Emotional Anatomy of Lockdown—see this Preprint
Details for Project 2—The Dynamics of Social Experiences in the Context of Extended Lockdown—coming soon!
- Climate Change Anxiety
Climate change anxiety is a growing problem for individual well-being. There are many existing interventions that address climate change anxiety, many of which may have unintended effects on outcomes other than individual well-being. This project presents a multiple-needs framework that can be used to analyse interventions in terms of their effects on individual, social, and environmental outcomes, allowing different stakeholders to choose the intervention that best suits their unique needs. Head to the dedicated study page to find out more.
- Emotional Responses to Uncertainty
This project seeks to understand people's emotional responses to uncertain events (e.g., awaiting results of an academic exam or medical test) in everyday life, how people cope with such events, and whether our understanding of these processes depends on the methods we use to measure emotions.
- Secrecy, Concealment, Affect and Mind-wandering in Everyday Life
Emerging research suggests that secrecy is common and costly for people's wellbeing. Yet, little is known about why this is and how people can cope with secrecy. This study aims to address outstanding theoretical and methodological blind-spots in the literature by studying secrecy using daily diary methodology which captures processes on a day-by-day basis to better understand how secrecy unfolds in everyday life.
- Emotional Experiences During Everyday Social Interactions
Interpersonal emotion regulation is an emerging research area of interest, however, only limited research has investigated interpersonal emotional regulation in everyday life. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating why and how people engage in interpersonal emotion regulation in everyday social interactions, and the relational and emotional outcomes of these social experiences.
Past Projects
- Assessing Emotions in Everyday Life
We’d like to invite you to participate in a project on assessing and managing your
emotions in everyday life. This research investigates your interactions and emotional experiences across the course of a week, and how you manage these experiences. You’ll have the chance to earn up to $65, and receive a personalized report of your emotions.
Head to the dedicated study page to find out more. - Daily Experiences of Social Connection in Victoria
Victoria is coming out of restrictions that curtailed people’s movements and ability to socialise with others. For many people, this is having a huge impact on health, well-being, and social relationships. This study will ask about your experiences of social connections and their impact on your daily life. It will take place over the course of 9 days (about 2 hours total commitment).
Head to the dedicated study page to find out more.
- Managing Emotions in Everyday Life
How we manage our emotions in response to real-life emotional challenges is key to our well-being. This research aims to investigate your emotional experiences across the course of a week, and how you manage those everyday emotional experiences.
Head to the dedicated study page to find out more.
- Mobile Momentary Mindfulness (MMM) and Emotions in Everyday Life
This research project aims to advance emotion science by systematically investigating the role of brief momentary mindfulness practice on people’s emotional experiences in daily life. The aim is to identify healthy patterns of emotions together with beneficial context(s) which enhance psychological well-being.
- Secrets in Everyday Life
Everybody keeps secrets – psychology research shows that 97% of people are keeping at least one secret at any given time. This study will investigate people’s experiences of secrecy across the course of a week. We will never ask you to describe your secrets in detail; this study is designed to understand the impact of keeping a secret on our psychology.
Head to the dedicated study page to find out more.
- The FEEL Research Project (Study 2)
The FEEL Research Project uses cutting-edge mobile technologies to track people's feelings and physiology (e.g., heart rate), as well as their use of different emotion regulation strategies, while they go about their usual daily activities. The aim is to investigate how people manage their emotions in daily life and to reveal when, and for whom, different strategies are most effective. This research will improve scientific understanding of emotions and emotion regulation in daily life, and will contribute to the development of targeted interventions for improving everyday emotion regulation. We hope that this knowledge will help people to achieve and maintain optimal psychological health and well-being.
- The FEEL Research Project (Study 1)
The first phase of the FEEL Research Project was conducted at Australian Catholic University in 2016. This 3-week project aimed to examine how people, from a variety of different backgrounds, experience and manage their emotions in daily life. Specifically, using a smartphone app (SEMA), participants were asked to respond to a number of questions about how they are feeling, their social context and how they perceive their environment, and how they have tried to manage or regulate their emotions 10 times per day for 21 consecutive days. During the 21 days, we will also measured participants' heart rate and skin conductance levels in daily life using a lightweight wristband monitor. Data analysis and publications are still in progress for this research project.
- Regulating Emotion Systems in Daily Life.
How people regulate their emotions is thought to be crucial for their psychological well-being, yet little is known about emotion regulation in daily life because most research has relied on lab experiments or global/retrospective surveys. Researchers are starting to investigate how people regulate their emotions across various situations in daily life using naturalistic methods such as ecological momentary assessment (EMA). However, validated measures of daily emotion regulation are lacking, leaving researchers to develop their own ad-hoc measures and making it difficult to synthesise findings across studies. The current study aims to develop a new 12-item EMA measure of emotion regulation in daily life by adapting the recently developed Regulation of Emotion Systems Survey (RESS; De France & Hollenstein, 2017).
SEMA
SEMA (Smartphone Ecological Momentary Assessment) is a suite of software for conducting intensive longitudinal survey research using iOS and Android smartphones. Primarily designed for Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), also known as the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), SEMA has the flexibility to deliver smartphone surveys at fixed or random intervals ranging from minutes to months, as well as allowing participant-triggered surveys (a.k.a. event-contingent sampling). Visit the SEMA website for more information: https://sema3.com
EMOTE
EMOTE (Everyday Measures of Temporal Emotions) is an open-access, searchable, and cumulative database of experience sampling data on daily emotional functioning, developed by the FEEL Lab. Experience sampling methods allow us to capture personally meaningful events that can't be recreated in the lab, to map dynamic fluctuations in emotional processes across time, and to study how these processes contribute to psychological well-being. However, conducting experience sampling studies is costly, time-intensive, and requires expertise. To reduce the barriers to using experience sampling data, and to harness its full scientific potential, we have built EMOTE. Visit the EMOTE website for more information: https://emotedatabase.com/
Introduction to Experience Sampling Methods
Dr. Kalokerinos discusses when ESM is useful, when things can go wrong, and how to design and execute a good ESM study. Slides can be downloaded via Dr. Kalokerinos OSF page
Measuring Emotion & Emotion Regulation in Daily Life
Dr. Kalokerinos and Dr. Peter Koval give an introduction to assessing momentary emotions and emotion regulation strategies in everyday life using the experience sampling method. This workshop focuses on selecting and developing survey items to assess emotion in daily life. Recording and slides can be downloaded via the OSF page.
Lab Contact Details
T: + 61 3 8344 7827
E: feel-lab@unimelb.edu.au
Address:
FEEL Lab
Room 620
Level 6, Redmond Barry Building
Tin Alley, The University of Melbourne
Parkville, 3010, VIC, Australia
We competitively accept a small number of interns for a December-February intake each year. If you are interested in joining the FEEL Lab as an intern, please complete the following form and we will get back to you prior to the start of the internship program for that year. The best time to apply is August-October.
If you are interested in joining the FEEL Lab as a graduate researcher, please complete the following form at any time and we will get back to you as soon as possible.