The BSEL seminar was held at WLFB BSEL Lab (3rd floor of Wilfred Brown) at 3:00PM.
A talk from Dr Lucas Gren titled ‘Research on affect in SE (new angles from social psychology research’.
There has been an increase in the interest of human factors in SE in recent years. Most new research fields that start to look at psychological aspects, start with individual psychology since people are different and that makes intuitive sense to everyone. While these are important aspects, the social psychology research field also highlights the importance of a profound understanding of the complex interplay between social context and affect, since affect influence cannot be explained in isolation. In this talk, I would like to introduce under which judgemental circumstances people are affected by affect and suggest how to add social context to studies on affect. I also reflect on why the individual focus in human factors of SE is so rigid and attribute much of it to an over-belief in the benefits of digitalization (e.g. biometrics). Another part of the problem, the way I see it, is that these new digital solutions aim at maximizing happy feelings while social psychology studies suggest that is not how to maximize effectiveness or long-term high motivation in employees.
