The Marcel Benoist prize, often considered as the Swiss Nobel prize, has been awarded to Ernst Fehr this year. It is the very first time that this prize goes to an economist. The minister and President of the Marcel Benoist Foundation, Pascal Couchepin, has received Ernst Fehr and portayed him as one of the most innovative and productive economists of our times.

Our whole NCCR is very proud of this prestigious scientific recognition.

On September 1-3, 2008, a dozen of Affective scientists participated in the joint Summer Institute organized by the NCCR IM2 in Riederalp (VS). At almost 2000 meters above sea level, the debates were very fruitful between psychologists and engineers and several scientific collaborations are starting between the two teams. 

On September 18-19, 2008, the NCCR research focus Language and Culture team organized a 2-day interdisciplinary workshop “Metaphor and Emotion: Theory, Practice and Experiment”. The event addressed the role of metaphor in cognizing and verbalizing emotion across several languages and culture groups, and exemplified an assortment of methodologies currently elaborated within several disciplines to achieve this goal. 

the NCCR Affective Sciences, in collaboration with the Languages of Emotion Cluster (Freie Universität Berlin) and the Interdisciplinary Wolfgang Köhler Center for the Study of Conflicts in Intelligent Systems (Humboldt-Universität Berlin), organized a social event at the XXIX International Congress of Psychology in Berlin during which the range of our research activities was presented. More than 150 guests took part. 

On July 5-6, 2008, for the second time, our NCCR participated in the Geneva popular-science event “La Nuit de la Science”, our theme being “le temps d’une émotion”. The way in which people perceive time is highly influenced by culture and language, as our researchers showed at their stand. The visiting public could take part interactively in an experiment on control of facial expressions of emotion over time, which provided lots of fun. Our historians showed the visitors how ancient civilisations dealt with emotions.

The American Academy of Political and Social Sciences has elected Prof. Ernst Fehr of our NCCR as their John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow.

The Director of our Centre, Prof. Klaus Scherer, is to be presented with the lifetime achievement award of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie (DGPs). The citation honours Klaus Scherer’s decades of contributions to emotion research, which have become known not only to academic researchers but to the wider public. The DGPs is the professional association of psychologists active in teaching and research in Germany.

Congratulations to two young researchers of the NCCR Affective Sciences, who have been awarded major funding by the European Research Council (ERC) under its new Starting Grants programme. Dr Gilles Pourtois, based in Geneva, was awarded CHF 1,400,000 to pursue his experimental research into anxiety and its effects on decision making and selective attention. Dr Tanja Singer, based in Zurich, was awarded CHF 2,400,000 to continue her study of the neuronal, hormonal and psychological mechanisms underlying social behavior.

Our Director Klaus Scherer has been elected a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science in the United States. The Association for Psychological Science (previously the American Psychological Society) is dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national and international level. The Association's mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare.

Happiness and subjective well-being are attracting more and more interest in psychology today. NCCR researcher Michael Eid, now professor at the Free University, Berlin, has co-edited a book of papers on “subjective well-being”, a field of study founded by the American psychologist Ed Diener. In this book, leading researchers in the field address current knowledge, including practical applications.