̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - emotions

Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Estherina Trachtenberg

zs332 — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:26:42 +0000

Estherina Trachtenberg is a Blavatnik Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and is currently working in the lab of Prof. Duncan Astle. She studies social connectedness and its impact on health, cognition, and the underlying brain networks.

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

fpjl2 — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:27:22 +0000

In my previous research on emotions in prison, I have been struck by the prevalence of suppression among prisoners. I distinctly recall one participant saying:

"I bottle it up, bottle it up, bottle it up until it spills over and then I talk about what’s on the surface but never actually get in too deep. And then you skim the top away and then you go again. And then when it runs over, you do the same thing, but you never actually empty that bottle."

Prisoners find limited channels for releasing such pent-up emotions: some of which are ‘prosocial’ (such as engaging with arts programmes and finding mentors), but some are far more destructive (e.g. self-harm and fighting with other prisoners).

Because the process of suppressing and releasing emotions seems closely tied to the social world of the prison, I want to find out what happens to prisoners’ emotions in more extreme forms isolation.

̽��ֱ��use of segregation units in England and Wales – where prisoners spend 23 hours a day in solitude – is increasingly being scrutinized by policy makers and academics. However, we know surprisingly little about the affective dimensions of these closed spaces, and how they affect prisoners over time.

Is solitary confinement just bad practice?

Interestingly, while there is a spate of research on the oppressive effects of segregation – which some have described as a form of punishment close to torture – the experience of solitary confinement is not uniform.

In fact, some prisoners have quite transformative experiences, even if they are in the minority. Others seek out isolation as an escape from retributive violence and accrued debts. ̽��ֱ��importance of this fact is not to advocate for isolation, but rather to highlight that we don’t exactly understand how segregation plays a role in the individual change process.

Looking for emotions

There’s been a rejuvenation of interest in researching emotions, and increasing recognition that emotions are essential to human behaviour. It’s surprising that emotions have typically been left out of studies of imprisonment and segregation because they are such ‘charged’ environments, where intense feelings are often on display. Importantly, intense does not always translate to unanimously ‘negative’ emotions either. In fact, my previous research has alerted me to the importance of expressions of joy, care and serenity in the prisoner experience.

This study will try to understand the specific ways prisoners manage their emotions and the prevalence of different ‘feeling states’. Looking for emotions can help us learn more about how prisoners locate avenues for change. While change is hardly a linear process, recent strands of research show that emotions play an essential role in shaping social life and the dynamics of why offenders desist from crime.

I want to explore emotions among both male and female prisoners. Though women only make up a small part of the penal estate (around 5 per cent) their experiences of segregation are rarely spotlighted. By directly exploring two segregation units I can not only learn more about gender differences, but also about the more ‘universal’ experiences of isolation.

Changes over time

Much of the research on segregation has failed to measure changes over time. But there may be a high rate of variability over time and first impressions are not always enduring. For example: initial experiences of shock can, in some cases, morph into constructive processes of reflection and clarity of thought.

Through repeated discussions with, and observations of prisoners, I hope to examine how prisoners develop (or get ‘stuck’). This will include understanding how cycles of infractions in segregation can amplify violence and cycles of despair. But will also attempt to explain triumphs as well as tragedies, and the possibilities for transformation, healing and locating hope.

Ben is an Economic & Social Research Council New Investigator at the Prisons Research Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. He can be found on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ben_Laws

New research will set out to examine the emotional world of solitary confinement. Dr Ben Laws from the Institute of Criminology discusses his project, and how the experience of ‘deep confinement’ might shape the lives of prisoners.

We know surprisingly little about the affective dimensions of these closed spaces

Ben Laws

Emily Shullaw

Illustration of solitary confinement

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

How emotions shape our work life

lw355 — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 10:12:03 +0000

It is important for people to feel happy rather than miserable in their work – research shows that contented employees deliver better results after all.

But some businesses regard happiness initiatives as a ‘salve’ that can be applied across an organisation to increase employee wellbeing, as Dr Jochen Menges from Cambridge Judge Business School explains.

“ ̽��ֱ��very fact that many organisations now ‘invest in happiness’ means they understand that emotions matter. But what they typically do – offering benefits like chill-out zones, free food, yoga classes – is rather blunt and does not account for the complexity of people’s emotional life.”

Working with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Faas Foundation, Menges is diving deeper into our understanding of emotions at work. ̽��ֱ��‘Emotion Revolution in the Workplace’ project has asked over 10,000 employees from a mix of occupations, levels, ages, genders and ethnicities in the USA not just how they feel, but also how they wish to feel at work.

̽��ֱ��results show that while some report feeling happy, many say they are stressed, tired and frustrated at work. When it comes to how people wish to feel, the study finds that most want to be appreciated, excited and happy. “There is a considerable gap between how people feel at work and how they would like to feel,” Menges explains. “Now the challenge is to find ways to close that gap.”

Although the analyses of this new dataset are still ongoing, Menges’ previous work gives some hints. He suggests that happiness may not primarily be about perks. “ ̽��ֱ��work itself, colleagues and supervisors, and the organisational structure and culture play major roles in whether or not employees are happy.”

In one study, Menges found that people experience more positive emotions in organisations that are in close touch with customers.

“These organisations tend to be more decentralised – decisions can be taken at lower levels – and they pay more attention to employees’ emotional abilities in recruiting and promotion processes. Those two factors in turn are linked to how positive the employees across an organisation feel.”

It’s not all about being positive, however.

Although most research suggests that any pleasant emotion has beneficial effects on performance, creativity and commitment, Menges and his colleagues found in a recent study that some positive emotions – pride, for example – can be a problem.

“If employees do not identify with their organisation, then pride increases their intention to leave. They think ‘I am better than this place,’ and look for new opportunities.” By contrast, if employees identified with their organisation and experienced events that made them feel angry, they were less likely to quit. “They want to stick it out and improve the situation.”

So any emotions can be a good thing, Menges suggests, even if they are unpleasant. “If managers suppress employees’ emotions, they over time create an environment of indifference. Employees just get on with work, but they are not as committed and invested anymore. A bit of emotion, a bit of up and down – that’s what makes work meaningful.”

Menges also challenges the idea that employees should pursue ‘happiness’. “I think people differ in how they wish to feel at work. Although many of us simply say ‘I want to be happy at work’, what we actually mean by ‘happy’ can differ greatly.”

Menges tries to understand how people differ in the feelings they look for at work, and whether those differences affect people’s choice of employer and engagement at work.

For example, someone wanting to feel safe is likely to look for a stable, predictable job, whereas someone looking for excitement might not care much about job security as long as the job provides a stimulating environment.

̽��ֱ��problem, according to Menges, is that most of us are not that specific when it comes to how we want to feel. “We lack the emotional vocabulary to pinpoint our desired emotions, so we just use ‘happy’. If we had better search terms, perhaps the search for happiness would not be that fuzzy and difficult.”

He suggests that organisations have a considerable influence on employees’ emotions and that employees within an organisation tend to feel alike. “Emotions are a very intimate and personal experience, and yet how we feel often depends largely on how people around us feel.

“In some places, people are enthusiastic, excited and inspired for a better future; in others, they are satisfied, calm, relaxed, easy-going. Both are positive but have very different energy levels, and that is linked to different outcomes.”

“In other places, there is aggression, stress and anxiety – or frustration, resignation and apathy. Again, both negative, but with different energy levels and outcomes.”

Places with high positive energy are at risk of losing it. Menges saw this at first hand when he studied the impact of the economic crisis of 2008–2009. “Companies were working at a frenetic pace – they increased the number and speed of activities, raised performance goals, shortened innovation cycles. They were trying to get more done with fewer people at a faster pace.”

But when performance went up, too often companies tried to make this pace the new normal. ̽��ֱ��result was that employees’ energy began to drain.

These companies were in the ‘Acceleration Trap’ – a term he and a colleague coined in an article published in ̽��ֱ��Harvard Business Review. A sobering 60% of surveyed employees in companies that were in this trap said that they lacked sufficient resources to get their work done, compared with 2% in companies that were not trapped.

“Managers in accelerated companies realised that something was amiss, but they took the wrong cure. Rather than giving employees some relief, they increased pressure. Ironically, their calls for high performance led to lower performance,” Menges says.

“ ̽��ֱ��Acceleration Trap is still a common problem. Any uncertainty, such as Brexit, can generate the conditions where companies overload and under-resource employees, and where organisational fatigue and burnout can result.”

̽��ֱ��good news is that it is possible to escape the trap. Menges looked at how leaders recognised the trap and moved their company in different directions – such as halting less-important work, being clear about strategy and changing the culture.

“When it comes to how people feel in a business, many point to the leader. And it is right that leaders play a key role in setting the mood of a place,” Menges explains. In particular, leaders with emotional intelligence – the ability to recognise emotions in oneself and others, and to regulate emotions in ways that help reach rather than hinder goals – are in a good position to steer their team’s and organisation’s collective emotions in the right direction.

“But I think we need to also look at how the organisation as a system is set up,” he says. Menges believes that some places are organised in a more emotionally effective way than others. “If companies figure out how they can institutionalise emotionally intelligent systems, they would be much better off than investing in ‘happiness initiatives’.”

Inset image: read more about our research on the topic of work in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Jochen Menges, an expert in organisational behaviour, thinks that emotions matter profoundly for employee performance and behaviour. His studies bring nuance to our understanding of how employees wish to feel at work.

A bit of emotion, a bit of up and down – that’s what makes work meaningful

Jochen Menges

̽��ֱ��District

Yes

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

sc604 — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 10:54:03 +0000

A new study, based on reports from more than 10,000 individuals, has found that physical activity, whether or not it is classified as exercise, can have a positive effect on emotional well-being. ̽��ֱ��results, by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex, are reported in the journal PLOS ONE, and demonstrate how smartphones can be used to collect large-scale data to examine psychological, behavioural and health-related phenomena as they occur in everyday life.

Using data gathered from users of a mood tracking app for Android phones, the researchers found that modest levels of physical activity – even if it couldn’t be classified as exercise – can increase a person’s reported emotional well-being, regardless of their baseline level of happiness. They also found that people reported being happier when they were physically active.

Earlier studies in this area have focused on the relationship between exercise and happiness, with mixed results. Some studies have found that happier people report exercising more, while others have found no relationship between happiness and exercise. Much of this past research has relied solely on retrospective self-reports, on data collected at only one time period, and on small samples.

For the new study, data on physical activity was passively gathered from smartphone accelerometers, and participants were also sent a short survey at two random intervals throughout the day which asked questions about their emotional state. Users reported their emotional state on a grid, based on how positive or negative, and how energetic or sleepy, they were feeling. Users were also asked a handful of questions about how their mood compared to normal.

̽��ֱ��activity data was then averaged over the course of the day, so while the researchers could not pinpoint what participants were doing at any given time, they found that participants who had higher levels of activity throughout the day reported a more positive emotional state.

“Our data show that happy people are more active in general,” said the paper’s senior author Dr Jason Rentfrow, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. “However, our analyses also indicated that periods of physical activity led to increased positive mood, regardless of individuals’ baseline happiness. There have been many studies about the positive psychological effects of exercise, but what we’ve found is that in order to be happier, you don’t have to go out and run a marathon – all you’ve really got to do is periodically engage in slight physical activity throughout the day.”

“Most of us don’t keep track of all of our movements during the day,” said study co-author Dr Gillian Sandstrom from the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex. “A person might track whether they went for a walk or went to the gym, but when asked, most of them probably wouldn’t remember walking from the desk to the photocopier, or from the car to the office door.”

“This study shows how mobile and wearable technology really can allow social psychologists to perform large longitudinal studies as well as open a direct and permanent connection with the users for advice and intervention,” said study co-author Professor Cecilia Mascolo from Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory.

̽��ֱ��research was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Research Council’s UBhave (Ubiquitous and Social Computing for Positive Behaviour Change) project.

Reference:
Lathia, N. Sandstrom, G.M., Mascolo, C., & Rentfrow, P.J. ‘Happier people live more active lives: Using smartphones to link happiness and physical activity.’ PLOS ONE (2016). https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0160589

̽��ֱ��largest-ever smartphone-based study examining the relationship between physical activity and happiness has found that even minimal levels of activity can have a positive effect on happiness.

In order to be happier, you don’t have to go out and run a marathon.

Jason Rentfrow

Walking

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Pain in the machine: a Cambridge Shorts film

amb206 — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Pain is vital: it is the mechanism that protects us from harming ourselves. If you put your finger into a flame, a signal travels up your nervous system to your brain which tells you to snatch your finger away. This response isn’t as simple as it sounds: the nervous system is complex and involves many areas of the brain.

We’re developing increasingly sophisticated machines to work for us. In the future, robots might live alongside us as companions or carers. If pain is an important part of being human, and often keeps us safe, could we create a robot that feels pain? These ideas are explored by Cambridge researchers Dr Ewan St John Smith and Dr Beth Singler in their 12-minute film Pain in the Machine.

Already we have technologies that respond to distances and touch. A car, for example, can detect and avoid an object; lift doors won’t shut on your fingers. But although this could be seen as a step towards a mechanical nervous system, it isn’t the same as pain. Pain involves emotion. Could we make machines which feel and show emotion – and would we want to?

Unpleasant though it is, pain has sometimes been described as the pinnacle of human consciousness. ̽��ֱ��human capacity for empathy is so great that when a robotics company showed film clips of robots being pushed over and kicked, views responded as if the robots were being bullied and abused. Pain is both felt and perceived.

Movies have imagined robots with their own personalities – sometimes cute but often evil. Perhaps the future will bring robots capable of a full range of emotions. These machines might share not only our capacity for pain but also for joy and excitement.

But what about the ethical implications? A new generation of emotionally-literate robots will, surely, have rights of their own

Pain in the Machine is one of four films made by Cambridge researchers for the 2016 Cambridge Shorts series, funded by Wellcome Trust ISSF. ̽��ֱ��scheme supports early career researchers to make professional quality short films with local artists and filmmakers. Researchers Beth Singler (Faculty of Divinity) and Ewan St John Smith (Department of Pharmacology) collaborated with Colin Ramsay and James Uren of Little Dragon Films.

̽��ֱ��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 to? ̽��ֱ��first of four Cambridge Shorts looks at the possibilities and challenges.

Pain in the machine

Researchers: Beth Singler and Ewan St John Smith

Still from Pain in the Machine

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

̽��ֱ��myth of quitting in anger

Anonymous — Mon, 30 May 2016 23:00:01 +0000

Anger at the workplace is commonly associated with employees storming out of the office and quitting their jobs, but a new study from the Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that the picture is far more complex.

More broadly, positive emotions are usually thought to lead to constructive outcomes and negative emotions to damaging outcomes for business and other organisations.

A new academic study finds, however, that these generalisations are often a myth: when identification with a company is high, anger over job situations often decreases (rather than boosts) a person’s intention to leave because such employees want to stick it out and improve the organisation rather than walk out in a huff.

Conversely, when a person’s identity with their organisation is low, anger increases their intention to quit, says the study published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Researchers at the Cambridge Judge Business School found that for an individual highly-identified with the organisation, anger directed toward the organisation is similar to self-blame because the organisation is part of their self-definition, and hence such people are less likely to respond to negative feelings by disengaging.

̽��ֱ��practical implication of the research, the authors say, is that it is unwise for companies to broadly characterise specific emotions as beneficial or detrimental to the organisation.

“ ̽��ֱ��study suggests that company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect,” says Jochen Menges, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor of Leadership at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. “So rather than seeking to suppress certain workplace emotions, companies should instead adopt practices that seek to encourage greater organisational identification.”

̽��ֱ��research focused on a large company in the pilot training and certification business, with a final dataset of 135 people employed in the United States and Europe who were evaluated over a one-year period. They were asked about their intentions to leave the company or remain, and about both general organisation issues (such as schedule and pay) and specific matters related to the job – such as events that “made you feel good at your job,” “made you feel disrespected as a pilot” or “made you feel close to other pilot instructors.”

As a follow-up, the study looked at actual staff turnover at the flight training company six months after the last survey of employees and found a significant correlation between the number of employees intending to leave the company and the actual staff turnover.

̽��ֱ��study examined guilt and pride, in addition to anger – and found here, too, a dark side of positive emotion and a bright side of negative emotion. For example, while pride is generally associated with a likelihood to remain at a company, for employees lacking in work-related identifications, a feeling of pride made them more likely to consider moving on.

̽��ֱ��research looked at a people’s identity with their occupation as well as organisation, and found that while occupational identity is not as powerful as organisational identity in staff turnover, it does play a complementary role.

Reference:
Samantha Conroy, William Becker and Jochen Menges. ' ̽��ֱ��Meaning of My Feelings Depends on Who I Am: Work-related Identifications Shape Emotion Effects in Organizations.' Academy of Management Journal (2016). DOI: 10.5465/amj.2014.1040

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

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.

Company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect.

Jochen Menges

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Dear digital diary…

tdk25 — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 09:05:39 +0000

A “life-logging” tool which tracks users’ behaviour through their smartphones and computers, then combines this to form an intricate, digital depiction of their day-to-day lives, has been devised by researchers.

̽��ֱ��academics behind the software, called “Storica”, say that their creation will enable people to capture moments they might otherwise forget, and at the same time monitor the influences which are having the biggest impact on their lives.

̽��ֱ��researchers - Dirk Trossen, at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and Dana Pavel, at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex – are now planning to commercialize Storica with the help of the crowd-funding website, Kickstarter. Their aim is to refine the software and release it in time for people to start recording their lives over Christmas.

“Life-logging” is an increasingly popular concept, which capitalises on the fact that many smartphones have sensors which can record facets of peoples’ behaviour – such as where they are, how fast they are moving, or how noisy their immediate environment is. In addition, fitness sensors can now be attached to phones, monitoring the owner’s exercise and sleep patterns.

Until now, however, most lifelogging apps have monitored specific aspects of people’s lives, such as their fitness, food intake, or mood. Storica will attempt to create a more complete picture, then play that back to users in fine detail, via a mind-boggling array of visual depictions.

̽��ֱ��prototype gathers most of its information automatically, both from sensors in the user’s smartphone, and from their desktop computer. ̽��ֱ��user can, however, make their own annotations, adding details about what they are doing and how they feel, as well as images, videos and sound recordings.

All of this data is kept on the Storica platform, which becomes a personal digital diary. Memorable moments, such as experiences on a holiday, can be turned into digital stories, highlighting events during the day using multimedia. ̽��ֱ��software can also create timelines, maps, and tagclouds, allowing people to retrieve an abundance of data about what they have been doing in more detail.

“On a simple level, it’s often hard to remember what you were up to last week, let alone last year, and Storica will enable you to recall that,” Trossen, who is based at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Computer Lab, said.

“At a more profound level, however, the software can also record information about what prompts certain behaviours, or when we are at our most stressed out, or relaxed. Over time, it should enable users to improve their awareness of the factors which are shaping their lives, enabling them to analyse their lifestyles and hopefully improve them for the better.”

Storica utilises an Android app called AIRS, which was released by Trossen and Pavel in 2011 and has so far had 12,000 downloads. When used on a smartphone, it can automatically capture information about where a person is, how light it is, the atmospheric pressure, who they are with, who they are calling or messaging, and how much they are using social media.

On a desktop computer, Storica gathers extra information as well – such as which applications are opened most often, and which web pages users have visited. At all times, however, users are in control of choosing what they want Storica to monitor, and what activity they would prefer the application to ignore.

Despite the privacy implications of such comprehensive data-gathering, none of the information that Storica records leaves the control of the end user, e.g., through saving on commercial servers. Instead, it is all saved to the user’s own devices (mobile and/or desktop), and remains exclusively their property, not that of the researchers.

̽��ֱ��digital stories which Storica creates, as well as the detailed data visualisations are, however, fully shareable on social media as short movies or images. In addition, the software is group-usable, so that a number of people can contribute to a single digital diary at once. For example, on a holiday, every member of a family could record their own experiences and photographs, then, through Storica, play the collective experience of everyone who was there back as a single digital story.

Trossen and Pavel are now hoping, through Kickstarter, to raise £50,000 to expand the system by, for example, improving the synchronisation of the data recordings, refining the system’s overall look, and integrating some newly-released fitness devices. If successful, they will then aim to release the first commercial version of Storica in time for Christmas, so that people can record their winter holiday experiences.

“Unlike comparable systems, this isn’t just about logging your life – it’s about giving you the tools to better understand what makes your life the way it is,” Trossen added. “We want to empower people with complete evidence about their lifestyles, while at the same time preserving the fun of recollecting memorable moments.”

To find out more about Storica, and contribute to the Kickstarter appeal, click here.

For more information about this story, please contact Tom Kirk, Tel: 01223 332300, thomas.kirk@admin.cam.ac.uk

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 could improve public well-being.

We want to empower people with complete evidence about their lifestyles.

Dirk Trossen

Dana Pavel

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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Mood-tracking app paves way for pocket therapy

tdk25 — Wed, 08 May 2013 04:00:42 +0000

A smartphone app that tracks people’s feelings and works out what might be triggering peaks in their mood, using the data invisibly captured by their phones, has been developed by researchers.

̽��ֱ��free app, called “Emotion Sense” has just been launched and is available for Android. It takes advantage of the fact that smartphones are increasingly capable of collecting information about where we are, how noisy our environment is, how much we are moving around, and who we communicate with.

Unlike other, similar, research projects, Emotion Sense then combines systematically-gathered data from a wide range of sensors with the user’s own report about their mood, which is entered through a system designed by psychologists. First, the user is asked to mark how they feel using an on-screen matrix called an “emotion grid”. Based on their response, the phone then conducts a brief survey, to clarify their emotional state.

By cross-referring both sets of data, the app’s designers hope that it will accumulate a very precise record of what drives people’s emotional peaks, showing, for example, when they are likely to be at their most stressed, or when they feel most relaxed. This could prove particularly valuable for helping people who need specialist psychological support.

Emotion Sense is also a live research project. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge-led team behind it previously carried out lab-based investigations in which participants were asked to record their feelings in a diary. ̽��ֱ��new system allows them to gather data about both the drivers of people’s moods, and how far smartphones can record this, in a “real world” setting.

Dr Neal Lathia, a research associate in the ̽��ֱ��’s Computer Laboratory, explained: “Behind the scenes, smartphones are constantly collecting data that can turn them into a key medical and psychological tool. Any smartphone now comes with numerous sensors that can tell you about aspects of your life, like how active you are, or how sociable you have been in the past 24 hours. In the long term, we hope to be able to extract that data so that, for example, it can be used for therapeutic purposes.”

̽��ֱ��app was created as part of a wider project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, called “Ubiquitous and Social Computing for Positive Behaviour Change” (or “UBhave”). Its overall aim is to see how far mobile phones can be used to monitor people’s behaviour and, where appropriate, change it for the better to improve their health and well-being.

“Most people who see a therapist may only have an appointment once every fortnight,” Dr Cecilia Mascolo, a reader in mobile systems at the Cambridge Computer Lab said. “Many, however, keep their phones with them most of the time. In terms of sheer presence, mobiles can provide an ongoing link with a person.”

Researchers have long been interested in the potential of mobile phones to monitor people’s behaviour. By combining the data from the GPS, accelerometer, and microphone with a log of the user’s calling and texting patterns, a study of a person’s smartphone can offer a very useful record of their habits, activities and routines.

Previous research by the Emotion Sense team focused on the potential of the microphone, tracking users’ conversations to work out how they were feeling. ̽��ֱ��research now seeks to exploit a wider range of sensors, combined with self-reporting from the user themselves, who can input data about how they feel.

When Emotion Sense is opened for the first time, only one sensor is “unlocked”. ̽��ֱ��app spends roughly a week collecting data from this sensor and testing it against the user’s emotional state. At the end of this, the user is asked to complete a short life-satisfaction survey, which unlocks a new sensor. After about eight weeks, a full range of sensors has been tested. This systematic approach provides the researchers with valuable data for study, but it is also designed as a “journey of discovery” for the user, giving them a step-by-step insight into what might be influencing their own mood swings.

Mood itself is registered through a system designed by psychologists within the research team. At different times of the day, the app sends the user a notification, rather like receiving a text message, asking them about their mood. These can be set to pop up on the phone as little as twice a day, and assess the user’s mood using a custom-designed “emotion grid”, followed by a survey.

̽��ֱ��grid has two axes, one stretching from “negative” to “positive” feelings, and one from “active” to “inactive”. Using their touchscreen, the user simply chooses the point on the grid that reflects how positive and active they feel. For example, a point close to the top right indicates high positivity and activity, suggesting that they feel energised or excited.

Uniquely, this general overview is then refined by a short survey, which asks the user to clarify exactly how they feel. ̽��ֱ��entire process takes about two minutes to complete.

“Most other attempts at software like this are coarse-grained in terms of their view of what a feeling is,” Dr Jason Rentfrow, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said. “Many just look at emotion in terms of feeling happy, sad, angry or neutral. ̽��ֱ��aim here is to use a more flexible approach, to collect data that shows how moods vary between people . That is something which we think is quite unique to the system we have designed.”

̽��ֱ��code which is used in Emotion Sense to collect sensor data from people’s phones is also being made available on an open-source basis so that other researchers can conduct their own experiments. It can be found at http://emotionsense.org/code.html. For information about the app in general, visit: http://emotionsense.org

For more information about this story, please contact: Tom Kirk, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Tel: 01223 332300; Mob: 07764 161923; Email: thomas.kirk@admin.cam.ac.uk

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 for psychological therapy and improving well-being.

Behind the scenes, smartphones are constantly collecting data that can turn them into a key medical and psychological tool.

Neal Lathia

Neal Lathia, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Computer Lab

̽��ֱ��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

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes