Emotion in Interaction

We study social interaction with a particular focus on the emotions that arise within it—how emotions are expressed and regulated in interpersonal encounters, and what meanings they hold in individuals’ experiential worlds. Our primary interest lies in emotions as a social phenomenon. The research is situated at the intersection of sociology, education, and psychology.

Our data consist of video-recorded interaction situations, interviews, and written narratives. The contexts of the study include various guidance situations, professional interactions related to work, brieftherapy, psychotherapy, and psychiatry. Our approach is qualitative; we examine the interactional practices, descriptions of experiences, and meanings found within the data. One of our goals is also to contribute to the theoretical and methodological discussion in the field of emotion research.

Ongoing studies in the group:

Work-related shame as an everyday experience and as a topic of counselling dialogue 

In my doctoral research, I study work-related shame, which refers to experiences of shame connected to one’s job, profession, and career. I focus on the dialectic between individual experience and the contextual frames that shape it. My aim is to develop an understanding of what work-related shame is as experienced and lived in everyday life. I am also interested in how a painful, sensitive, and partly unconscious affective experience such as shame can become a subject of conscious reflection and shared dialogue. I apply a co-research approach and the principles of dialogical counsellingconversations in my study. 

Researcher: Maija Mustonen

Ostracism within school communities

My doctoral research examines ostracism, or social exclusion, within school communities. The phenomenon has rarely been studied as a distinct concept; instead, it has primarily appeared in the context of bullying research. The aim of my study is to understand how ostracism manifests in school workplaces, what kinds of emotions and effects it evokes, and whether the experiences reveal, for example, thehierarchical nature of school communities or differences between staff groups. The qualitative data will consist of written narratives collected from teachers and school assistants. The research will producenew knowledge to promote well-being at work and psychological safety in the school environment. 

Researcher: Anna Räsänen

Counsellor voice as part of forming and maintaining alliance 

 This study examines intonation as one modality of voice usage, particularly as a mediator of cues in forming and maintaining an alliance in guidance interaction. The goal is to analyze variation in intonation as an empathy-displaying resource. The data consists of career counselling interactions. During initial encounters, alliance formation can be examined in particular from the perspective of sound use in connection with the orientations of the guidance, i.e. the working methods.  This research is multidisciplinary utilizing conversation analysis and the Interpersonal Process Recall method. By combining these two methods, experienced emotional states can be studied by active involvement of research participants, producing new knowledge for the guidance field also methodologically. The results of the research can be used more extensively in all interaction work to increase the knowledge and understanding of voice use. 

Researcher: Tiia Seppä

Social Shyness: knowledge, practice, ethics

I conduct theoretical research on shyness as a human scientific category. In my dissertation Social Shyness: knowledge, practice, ethics, I examine how shyness is positioned across different knowledge systems and explore the epistemological tensions it entails. I am interested in conceptualising shyness as a biopsychosocial phenomenon and exploring what is required to produce knowledge that is practically applicable. My approach is integrative and interdisciplinary. I aim to transcend conventional methodological boundaries in studying a phenomenon that does not easily fit within traditional academic disciplines or research frameworks. 

Researcher: Päivi Häkkinen

Building agency in rehabilitation

In my Phd dissertation” Building agency in the context of the goal setting in rehabilitation” I study  how the concept of the agency is connected with the interaction in the context of the rehabilitation.  My aim is to understand how and by which conditions agency is built during the individualized goal setting. I approach the construction of agency as observable goal-setting interaction practices, as well as goal-setting as subjective and cultural meanings associated with it by the parties. Setting a goal is important part of the successful and effective rehabilitation process. However, it is not known how negotiating goals builds or destabilizes a rehabilitates agency.

Researcher: Mari Kantanen

Guidance counselling in Finnish schools 

We examine the encounters between guidance counsellors and students in Finnish schools. The study is part of the research project TEHEKOP, which studies intensive personalized guidancecounselling in schools through the study of everyday practices. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study is conversation analysis where the data are videorecordedguidance encounters. We study what kinds of social actions are found from the guidance interactions and how institutional aims of the guidance are performed through them. Our study is the first one to apply conversation analysis to study guidance in Finnish schools. 

Researchers: 

Liisa Voutilainen 

Sanna Vehviläinen
TEHEKOP project 

Interaction in solution-focused brief therapy

In this doctoral dissertation, I study the interaction between client and therapist in solution-focused brief therapy processes, specifically examining the practices through which the parties create interactional engagement. The aim of the research is to investigate how this engagement manifests and what therapeutic consequences it has in situations where the therapy process is particularly short. The data consists of video recordings of therapy sessions between both Finnish and Swedish –speaking customer-therapist-dyads, and the research method is conversation analysis. The study aims to provide new insights into the effectiveness of solution-focused brief therapy and its potential role within a strained and tiered mental health service system in Finland. The study also helps to define what kind of interaction is sufficient to be considered therapeutic and promote mental well-being. 

Researcher: Mariel Wuolio (UH)

Interaction in the diagnostic assessment process of depression

In my doctoral dissertation, I investigate the diagnostic assessment process of depression and the subsequent treatment negotiation that unfolds during psychiatric consultations, employing a longitudinal conversation analytic approach. The study focuses on how aethiological models of depression shape the interaction between psychiatrist and patient, how the psychiatrist displays empathy toward the patient, and how, over the course of the assessment process, the decision is constructed as to whether the patient is offered psychotherapy, antidepressant medication, or a combination of the two. 

Researcher: Eve Rasku (UH)