John Habershon PhD FRSA

John began his career in creative qualitative research at Cooper Research and Marketing (CRAM), later holding senior management positions at TNS. His PhD thesis at Imperial College, London was based on intensive interviews with unemployed professional and managers exploring and measuring the psychological consequences of unemployment. He has continued to pursue his interest in the study of emotions during his market research career, capturing on video, analysing and labelling non-verbal signs of emotion.

Developing Coding of Non-Verbal
Cues (NVC)

We conducted a systematic trial over the course of a year to identify the 55 subtle and mixed emotions.  We used material designed to arouse a whole range of emotional responses, from positive emotions, to cognitive and mind/body split. To elicit strong negative emotions we read out a list of the most stressful life events and asked the respondents to describe the experience of divorce, bereavement etc. The trial underlined the importance of knowing the context when coding emotions. Knowing how the respondent is likely to react is a key advantage in interpreting signs. Studies have shown that an emotion out of context can be hard to identify (which is one of the weaknesses of AI technologies).

Ingrid Berglund MA BACP

Ingrid is a trained psychotherapist and counsellor who began her career in acting and Swedish translation. She worked with John to develop the app and iBooks and has extensive experience in coding non-verbal cues, including with children as young as three years old.