katiehoemann.com

Emotion varies by situation, by person, and by culture

I study how these contexts shape the feelings, understandings, and behaviors through which we relate to ourselves, each other, and the world. To do this, I use tools that capture emotion in the field of everyday life, and that allow individuals and communities to speak for themselves.

Among my projects

Developing contextualized ways of studying emotion

I conduct studies that ask people to report on their experiences in their own words, while peripheral physiological activity (e.g., heart rate), movement, and other behavioral and environmental data (e.g., location) are recorded by sensors in smartphone and wearable devices. This approach allows me to examine emotion in high definition and discover patterns that emerge in each situation and for each person.

Modeling individual differences in emotion

People vary in how they experience and understand emotion, and these differences have widely been shown to impact relationships and health. I think of people who are skilled at emotion as being experts in this domain, and my studies are designed to help us better understand how this expertise plays out over time and across contexts, as well as how it develops and can be improved.

Understanding cultural differences in emotion

Culture organizes how people make meaning of their own and others’ experiences, and different groups of people accomplish this task differently. I use descriptive and discovery-oriented methods that can reveal these differences and capture an insider’s perspective on cultural modes of feeling and interaction.

Overview of training & funding

In fall 2024, I will be joining the University of Kansas as Assistant Professor and Dale J. Weary Faculty Fellow of Social Psychology. From 2020-2024, I was a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at KU Leuven in Belgium, where I was funded by fellowship from Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship from the European Commission. I obtained my PhD in 2020 from Northeastern University, where I also received a predoctoral fellowship from the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Scholar Award from P.E.O. International. I hold an MA in Cognitive Linguistics from Bangor University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology, Spanish, and Linguistics from Northwestern University.