Ethics is often treated as an institutional process, including practices of following local regulations, applying for ethical approval, and handling consent forms. In this workshop, we want to move beyond the administrative side of ethics and create a space for reflecting on the contingencies and ethical dilemmas that researchers handle when, for example, conducting experiments with participants, studies with technology users or ethnographic fieldwork.

This workshop invites participants who are interested in reflecting on the lived experiences of research, navigating discomfort, and responding to unexpected contingencies. We want to stimulate discussion on how researchers balance the fine line between what is legal, what is ethical and what the situation requires, making situated decisions in ethically ambiguous situations.

The workshop will have two sessions, i) group discussion about own experiences of felt and situated ethics during the whole process from planning a study, data collection, storage, analysis, to presentation, and ii) zine making to reflect on these discussions, documenting own experiences and/or desired ethical scenarios.

Workshop participants will get the opportunity to contribute to a joint paper about felt ethics beyond consent.

Keywords: Felt ethics, Sensitivities, Contingency

Preliminary schedule: 

Session 1
Introduction 15 min
Group discussions 30 min
Coffee break 30 min

Session 2
Introduction to zines 5 min
Zine making 50 min
Zine vernissage and wrap-up 20 min

Maximum number of participants: 20

This workshop introduces DuckSoup, an experimental platform designed to study social cognition through real-time social interaction experiments. DuckSoup enables researchers to manipulate participants’ facial expressions and vocal features covertly during live video or audio interactions, allowing for causal investigation of social behavior in ecologically valid settings. Moreover, DuckSoup can be used to streamline the data collection of social interaction experiments, by enabling researchers to collect dozens of participants in parallel and in real time.

In the first session (45 minutes), we will present the capabilities of DuckSoup. To do this, we will present previous experiments performed with the platform. First, we will present two experiments where we aligned the smiles of participants in real-time with face transformation filters during speed dating and meet-up sessions, to investigate the causal effect of facial alignment on free conversations. Second, we will present an experiment where we manipulated the vocal masculinity of participants in real time during negotiations, which enabled us to investigate how vocal masculinity can bias group decision-making.

In the second session (45 minutes), we will demonstrate how to design and launch a simple social interaction experiment using DuckSoup. This includes setting up participant pairings, applying real-time manipulations, and recording synchronized audio-video datasets. If conditions allow, we will collect a dataset during the workshop with attendees.

This workshop is intended for cognitive scientists interested in moving beyond stimulus-response and correlational study paradigms of social interaction research, instead engaging with dynamic, interactive methods for studying social cognition, decision-making, and affective processes.

Keywords: Social cognition, social interactions, Voice/face transformations, Real-time experimental manipulation, Causal inference

Duration: 2 x 45 minutes

Maximum number of participants: No limit, participants can also attend online.

Performance Magic involves using practical knowledge of human cognition to induce illusory experiences in spectators for the purposes of entertainment. Contemporary researchers are increasingly coming to realize that magic methods represent a valuable toolkit for driving novel experimental research. In this workshop, Matt Tompkins will present an overview of how magic methods have been implemented in research across various domains of cognitive science: Including studies of attention, memory, reasoning, comparative cognition, and human robot interaction. Together, we’ll learn some basic magic techniques: How to ‘vanish’ a small object and how to read a spectator’s mind. Matt will also lead discussions focusing on practical ideas of how magic techniques and literature can be integrated into your own research methodologies, and how it can be used to enhance your teaching and science communication. 

Preparing for the workshop:

• No prior experience performing magic is required! For the practical portions: Please bring along a deck of playing cards and a small object (like a coin) that you can conceal in your hand.
• Optional background readings will also be provided

Keywords: Magic, illusion, attention, memory, reasoning, comparative cognition, research methods, teaching, science communication

Duration: 2 x 45 minutes

Maximum number of participants: 30