About us

Emotions are an important part of our lives. We usually think of emotions as mere feelings or sensations, some pleasurable and others less so. But our emotions tell us about the world. And, not surprisingly, the world shapes our emotions.

We are not just passive agents in our emotional lives, we can regulate our emotions through various strategies — taking a deep breath when we are angry or distracting ourselves when we are anxious. We can also make changes in the world to change our emotions, such as listening to music to cheer us up or getting tucked in bed to calm us down.

We are interested in the ways that engaging with digital environments and artificial intelligence can shape the emotions we experience. For example, the design of a social media platform can shape: what content we encounter, how we encounter other people, how we present ourselves, and how we evaluate ourselves and others. And these influence the emotions we feel and our well-being.

Our aim is to better understand how interacting with various digital technologies, from social media platforms to chatbots, shapes our emotional lives and our relationships with ourselves and others and to develop resources to reflect on how our digital devices impact our well-being.