• Christel W. van Eck, Bert Bakker, Disa Sauter, Gijs Schumacher, and Marijn Meijers

Our project aims to delve into the intricate interplay of emotions—facial, verbal, physical, and experiential—within conversations about climate change, with a focus on understanding how these emotions influence the trajectory of discussions and ultimately impact viewpoints on climate change interventions. Employing a mixed methods approach, we will conduct focus group sessions to gather comprehensive data on participants' emotional responses. Central to our methodology is the innovative MEXCA tool, designed to capture and analyze the multifaceted expression of emotions in these conversations by utilizing facial movement analysis, vocal characteristic assessment, and sentiment analysis of speech content. Key questions guiding our research include understanding the interactions between various emotional experiences and qualitatively examining how verbal expressions of emotions influence the direction of heated discussions about climate change. Our project team comprises a diverse interdisciplinary group, including communication scientists, psychologists, and political scientists.

• Milica Nikolic and Vanessa van Aast

In the first few months of life, infants are limited in their ability to regulate distress. They highly depend on their caregivers to balance their state by means of so-called “co-regulation”. This entails a dynamic interplay between the infant’s and caregiver’s states in which the caregiver shifts from mirroring the infant’s state to a state that facilitates regulation of the infant. Next to learning how to regulate arousal in interactions with their caregivers, infants become self-regulated individuals through biological maturation, and the development of brain-body coupling (i.e., connections between the central nervous system and the autonomic nervous system) in particular. In this project, we examine the transition from co-regulation to self-regulation via brain-body coupling in naturalistic interactions between mothers and their 6-36 months-old infants. We also focus on the role of family socio-economic status and related parenting stress in the link between co-regulation and infants' self-regulation. Tracing this process does not only provide valuable insights in infant (self-)development, but also highlights the role of a caregiver, offering valuable insights for early prevention of psychopathology.

• Eddie Brummelman and Gerben van Kleef

When was your father or mother really proud of you? Most people have fond memories of the times their parents were proud of them—such as when they graduated from college, excelled in sports, overcame adversity, or helped a person in need. Yet, little is known about the psychological origins and consequences of parental expressions of pride. We investigate the idea that parental expressions of pride serve a critical role in the transmission of values across generations. We also investigate socioeconomic disparities in these processes.

• Agneta Fischer and Christina Colonnesi

Children’s facial expressions of shyness serve as nonverbal indicators of their self-conscious emotionality and ambivalence toward social interactions. Positive expressions of shyness have been linked to several prosocial outcomes in childhood, including greater mentalizing abilities and lower levels of social anxiety, whereas non-positive expressions are associated with higher temperamental fear and increased social anxiety. Early infant-caregiver interactions are believed to play a crucial role in shaping these emotional expressions during the first years of life; however, research directly examining how environmental influences contribute to their development remains surprisingly limited. In this project, we investigate how early parent-child interactions (e.g., synchrony and mind-mindedness) influence the development of both positive and non-positive expressions of shyness across infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood, while also examining how social parental factors—such as socioeconomic status, cultural background, and education—modulate these relationships. To achieve this, we employ expert behavioral micro-coding, automated facial expression and vocalization analysis software, and parental reports.