What is Emotionwise?
What are the benefits of learning emotions?
How does it work?
Why do we do it?
What is Emotionwise?
EmotionWise creates educational and research tools to promote empathy and compassion learning worldwide. We believe that the sum total of our knowledge of human emotions should be available to schools, educators and the general public for free.
Our group researches cutting-edge theories in empathy, emotional intelligence and compassion so that others can better themselves and their relationships with others.
Emotionwise also designs specialized emotional intelligence assessment and training tools for companies and individuals, so that we can support our compassion research and free curriculum development.
We have developed the first scientifically validated expressional intelligence assessment tool backed by over two decades of facial expression and vocalization coding research.
We are a group comprised of psychology and education faculty, graduate students and other colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley.
What are the benefits of learning emotions?
There are big advantages to knowing yourself and others. The oldest, most primal signals of emotion are in the face and voice.
We have regions of the brain devoted to processing information about facial expressions and vocalizations of emotion. They embody a rich language that transcends culture and the spoken word. This website gives you the opportunity to hone your empathic skills for free.
Above any other measure of intelligence, emotional intelligence is the best predictor of satisfaction with life and social relationships. Emotional intelligence is central to human social life.
Emotionwise builds these skills in unique ways. We show you how to recognize emotion both in the face and the voice, and we trains you to recognize over 20 emotions that are so vital to social living.
The best part is that every element and practice of EmotionWise is rooted in scientific research, available to schools and educators for free.
How does it work?
The first step is that we study emotion psychology for a living. The science of emotional expression is now 130 years old.
In the past 20 years alone, there have been over 300 scientific articles and countless books on the nature of emotional expression in the face, the voice, and in touch, and most of these were not written for a general audience.
We thought it might be nice to translate all of this incredible academic research into something that everyone could access and enjoy. EmotionWise is our solution.
We and our closest colleagues are the leading experts and researchers in this field. All of our facial expressions and vocalizations have been produced by trained actors and coded by experienced experimenters.
Each example on this website represents expressions that are recognized in most or all cultures around the world. These expressions have all been validated in previous scientific experiments, which means we feel confident that we’re giving you accurate information.
There is no training tool on the market today that offers to teach facial expressions and vocal tones together. Our concept is the first of its kind, and we will continually update all of our resources as new information comes in from our emotion projects.
Why do we do it?
We believe in the importance of compassion so much that we wanted to give our science to everyone. It makes our work more enjoyable and fulfilling to know that others are benefitting directly from it.
Imagine an entire generation of children educated in the art of compassion and emotional awareness. What kind of society would they go on to create? Our group wants to help foster that generation, while at the same time creating cutting-edge and fun new tools based on our work.
