Profile

Biography

• 2010 – 2016: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Post-doc and Research Group Leader
• 2003 – 2009: University of California, Santa Barbara, PhD in Social Psychology
• 2001 - 2003: New School for Social Research, MA in Psychology
• 1992 – 1996: Macalester College, BA in English Literature

Research

Overview

Affect and Social Interaction in Virtual Environments

Projects

The goal of my research is to describe how affect and behavior emerge and unfold in the midst of social interactions and other emotionally loaded experiences. I use virtual reality and other digital technologies to conduct this work and to explore, further, the experience of emotions through technologically mediated interactions. 

• Proxemics: I study on how attitudes and motivation are implicitly expressed during social interactions through nonverbal approach and avoidance. I examine how subtle differences in gaze and proximity express positive or negative reactions to others, and predict more explicit behaviors such as aggression or helping.
• The dynamics of emotional experience: I use virtual environments to study the waxing and waning of emotional behavior in terms of subjective experience, peripheral physiology, and movement behavior.

Collaborators

• Nilanjana Dasgupta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Mario Weick, University of Kent
• Leo Schilbach, Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry
• Tania Singer, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Publications

Selected publications

• McCall, C., Hildebrandt, L. K., Hartmann, R., Baczkowski, B. M., & Singer, T. (2016). Introducing the Wunderkammer as a tool for emotion research: Unconstrained gaze and movement patterns in three emotionally evocative virtual worlds. Computers in Human Behavior, 59, 93-107.
• McCall, C., Hildebrandt, L. K., Bornemann, B., & Singer, T. (2015). Physiophenomenology in retrospect: Memory reliably reflects physiological arousal during a prior threatening experience. Consciousness and cognition,38, 60-70.
• Hildebrandt, L. K., McCall, C., Engen, H. G., & Singer, T. (2016). Cognitive flexibility, heart rate variability, and resilience predict fine‐grained regulation of arousal during prolonged threat. Psychophysiology.
• McCall, C., & Singer, T. (2015). Facing off with unfair others: introducing proxemic imaging as an implicit measure of approach and avoidance during social interaction. PloS one, 10(2), e0117532.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Psychology in Society
• Social Interaction