Team members

Current lab members:

Elise Dan-Glauser, PhD

Group Leader, Assistant Professor

With an Eccellenza fellowship from the SNF, we are aiming at better understanding how personality is related to emotion emergence through appraisal processes and what are the determinants of emotion regulation efficiency.

My other interests go toward examining the effects of simultaneous use of several emotion regulation strategies, other individual differences pertaining adapted emotion processes (empathy, self-esteem, creativity), as well as how differenciated appraisal processes lead to different emotions.

Contact: elise.danglauser@unil.ch
Phone: +41 (0)21 6926273
Office: 4138

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Marcel Meyer

Post-doc
Principally, my research is centred on two key areas, emotion
regulation and cognitive control of emotion. After my PhD at
Cardiff University I further enriched my research portfolio on
these two themes, with postdoctoral placements across Switzerland
and Germany. Here, in Lausanne we are now establishing a new line of
investigation, aiming to elucidate the diverse interplay between
emotional compentence, emotion regulation beliefs and emotion
regulation-linked behaviours.

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Livia Sacchi

PhD Student

In my thesis, I address the link between personality, specific appraisals, and emotional response patterns at the experiential, expressive, and physiological levels. It was suggested that changes in the nature of the felt emotion necessitate changes in appraisal processes. It was also demonstrated that personality can be seen as a predisposition to feel more frequently certain emotions. We could thus assume that personality traits influence certain appraisals, which in turn influence the consecutive emotional reactions. In my research, I thus aim at comprehensively addressing the routes that goes from personality to emotional reactions through appraisal processes. Elucidating these relationships will deepen our understanding of emotional reactivity differences between individuals.

Contact: livia.sacchi@unil.ch

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Elena Trentini

PhD Student

Emotions are very frequent in everyday life and drive our behaviour and adaptation. Both the society and the individual needs urge people to modulate these emotions, this is called emotion regulation. In my thesis, I address the efficiency of emotion regulation strategies.  By examining the variation of emotional response patterns at the experiential, expressive, and physiological levels when people are regulating, we can rapidly identify in individuals which emotion regulation strategy is efficient and which one is not. Past studies have, by such means, categorized strategies as either efficient or not efficient, but without taking into account the personality of the one performing this regulation. We thus assume that personality traits influence the ressources that are mobilized to regulate emotions and that certain emotion regulation strategies may be more efficient for certain personalities. Elucidating these relationships will deepen our understanding of why some emotion regulation may appear efficient for some individuals but not for others.

Contact: elena.trentini@unil.ch

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Sofia Batziou

PhD Student

Emotions are a potent source of information that can signal if a situation is beneficial for the psychological and physical self, or if an adjustment is required. The emotion regulation (ER) process, through which one increases, maintains or diminishes the strength and the duration of an emotion, allows an adaptation to internal and external demands. Throughout this process, a variety of factors can influence which strategy will be chosen, as well as how effective the selected strategy will be. The goal of my thesis is to investigate if personality can be identified as one of these factors. In particular, I aim at understanding if and which personality characteristics are related to a preference for specific ER strategies, and thus to a more frequent use and to an enhanced effectiveness of these strategies. This will refine our knowledge on why some individuals chose ER strategies beyond their (non-)adaptive nature.

Contact: sofia.batziou@unil.ch

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Francesco Ruinato

Research Assistant

I am interested in the characterization of affective processes, with a particular emphasis on the influence of context. My primary focus is on the various kinds of emotions that individuals experience, and how they are influenced in different real-life settings. In my research, I aim to uncover the particular emotions arising in the driving context, with the aim of understanding road rage and road anxiety emergence. My research seeks to identify the specific situations that contribute to these negative experiences and to explore how they can be better managed.

Contact: francesco.ruinato@unil.ch

Alumni:

Julia Kolly

Student Research Assistant 2020-2021

My activity in the lab dealt with a project examining to what extent creativity, and in particular divergent creativity, can be related to the use of different emotion regulation strategies. More specifically, we were interested in the use of cognitive reappraisal and how its use is impeded or facilitated by individual differences in creative abilities.

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Simon Thuillard

Research Assistant, 2016-2018

Besides working on the affective consequences of Situation selection, I am particularly interested on humor appreciation and the role of appraisal in finding a stimuli funny or not. I would like to test several types of humorous stimuli corresponding to different kind of humor theories: the incongruity theory, corresponding to a cognitive point of view, and the superiority theory, corresponding to a more social point of view. Using psychophysiological measures, I would also like to assess the possible usefulness of humor as an emotion regulation strategy.

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Marianne Richter

Student Research Assistant, 2017

With Elise Dan-Glauser, I worked on two projects investigating appraisal processes and emotional responses in real life situations. We investigated the complex relationship there is between personality and significant past experience,  and the appraisal of daily emotional situations and their emotional consequences (responses).