Topic description and stories

‘I bottle it up’: the emotions of solitary confinement

01 Apr 2019

New research will set out to examine the emotional world of solitary confinement. Dr Ben Laws from the Institute of Criminology discusses his project...

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How emotions shape our work life

18 Jun 2018

Jochen Menges, an expert in organisational behaviour, thinks that emotions matter profoundly for employee performance and behaviour. His studies...

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Walking

Physical activity, even in small amounts, benefits both physical and psychological well-being

05 Jan 2017

The largest-ever smartphone-based study examining the relationship between physical activity and happiness has found that even minimal levels of...

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Still from Pain in the Machine

Pain in the machine: a Cambridge Shorts film

02 Nov 2016

The pain we experience as humans has physical and emotional components. Could we develop a machine that feels pain a similar way – and would we want...

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The myth of quitting in anger

31 May 2016

Anger often decreases – rather than boosts – a person’s intention to quit a job when they identify strongly with their company, says a new study.

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Storica allows users to revisit any aspect of their lives in extreme detail, producing digital stories and an array of graphs and data which may help people to find out more about what is influencing their feelings and behaviour.

Dear digital diary…

12 Aug 2013

A powerful life-logging tool which captures and stores memorable moments in people’s lives is being developed by two researchers who argue that it...

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The Emotion Sense app asks users to record their feelings on a chart designed by psychologists, then surveys them further to assess their mood accurately. This is cross-referred with data about their behaviour, picked up by sensors within the phone itself

Mood-tracking app paves way for pocket therapy

08 May 2013

An Android app which keeps tabs on users’ mood swings and works out what might be causing them has been developed by researchers, with implications...

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Festival of Ideas: Musical mayhem

Music of kindness: playing together strengthens empathy in children

13 Jun 2012

A year-long study on childrens' music-making indicates that playing music in groups on a regular basis greatly improves a child’s ability to...

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Danelle van Zyl-Hermann.

The emotional historian?

28 Feb 2012

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, a Gates scholar with an interest in the emotional history of South Africa, explains why the study of society's sentiments...

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Darwin's copy of the Duchenne photographs used in his experiments. The same photos will be used in the Festival of Ideas event and then on the website.

The face of emotions: Darwin, computers and autism

21 Oct 2011

An online recreation of Charles Darwin’s famous experiment on the expression of emotion is being launched at Cambridge University’s Festival of Ideas...

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smiley

The meaning of emoticons

13 Oct 2011

The emoticons used on Twitter are a language in themselves and are taking on new and often surprising meanings of their own, according to new...

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Autism biomarker.

Biomarker for autism discovered

12 Jul 2011

Research provides opportunity for identifying genes linked to autism.

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