Annett Schirmer
Biographic Data
| ID | 110500 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Annett Schirmer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Annett |
| FAMILY NAME | Schirmer |
| SIGNATURE | SCHIRMER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1474-2788 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Attraction in every sense: How looks, voice, movement and scent draw us to future lovers and friends
What makes someone attractive has been examined for faces, in terms of common preferences, and for opposite-sex interactions. We expanded on this by considering also other non-verbal modalities, personal preferences and same-sex interactions. We presented the face, body motion, voice and body odour from 61 non-verbal agents (34 women) as stimuli in an attractiveness rating to 71 perceivers (37 women). Our results showed that the modalities were d…
Feeling "Pawsitively" Good: Human-Pet Touch Predicts Subjective Wellbeing
Musicality – Tuned to the melody of vocal emotions
Musicians outperform non‐musicians in vocal emotion perception, likely because of increased sensitivity to acoustic cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre. Yet, how musicians make use of these acoustic cues to perceive emotions, and how they might differ from non‐musicians, is unclear. To address these points, we created vocal stimuli that conveyed happiness, fear, pleasure or sadness, either in all acoustic cues, or selectively in e…
Stroking and Leaning: The Give and Take of Social Touch Between Humans and Their Pets
What Makes Touch Comfortable? An Examination of Touch Giving and Receiving in Two Cultures
This study examined how touch role and culture shape affective touch experiences. Germans ( N = 130) and Chinese ( N = 130) were surveyed once as toucher and once as touchee. For different touch actions, they (a) provided free-text descriptions of what prompts touch, (b) indicated with whom touch feels comfortable, and (c) highlighted areas of touch comfort on a body outline. Overall, touch was prompted by affectionate feelings, was more comforta…
When the Music’s No Good: Rhythms Prompt Interactional Synchrony But Impair Affective Communication Outcomes
Spontaneous motion synchrony between interaction partners benefits the interaction. Here we probed how musical rhythms, which are highly temporally organized, modulate this process. We video-taped conversations held in silence or with an auditory background that was metrical and regular (one measure looped), metrical and irregular (different measures in random order), non-metrical and regular, or non-metrical and irregular. Motion time-series der…
More than one kind: Different sensory signatures and functions divide affectionate touch
The study of affectionate touch centers on gentle stroking. Yet friendly physical contact entails other actions, such as embracing, holding, kissing, leaning, petting, squeezing, or tickling. Here, we probed whether these actions are redundant or can be meaningfully differentiated by asking participants ( N = 161) to complete a few tasks for each action. Coloring of body maps emphasized touching of upper body hairy and glabrous skin, contrary to …
Vicarious social touch biases gazing at faces and facial emotions
Research has suggested that interpersonal touch promotes social processing and other-concern, and that women may respond to it more sensitively than men. In this study, we asked whether this phenomenon would extend to third-party observers who experience touch vicariously. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants (N = 64, 32 men and 32 women) viewed prime and target images with the intention of remembering them. Primes comprised line drawings …
Reach out to one and you reach out to many: Social touch affects third-party observers
Casual social touch influences emotional perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours of interaction partners. We asked whether these influences extend to third-party observers. To this end, we developed the Social Touch Picture Set comprising line drawings of dyadic interactions, half of which entailed publicly acceptable casual touch and half of which served as no-touch controls. In Experiment 1, participants provided basic image norms by rating how …
Affective dimensions of odor perception: A comparison between Swiss, British, and Singaporean populations
Do affective responses to odors vary as a function of culture? To address this question, we developed two self-report scales in the United Kingdom (Liverpool: LEOS) and in Singapore (city of Singapore: SEOS), following the same procedure as used in the past to develop the Geneva Emotion and Odor Scale (GEOS: Chrea, Grandjean, Delplanque et al., 2009). The final scales were obtained by a three-step reduction of an initial pool of 480 affective ter…
Task and sex modulate the brain response to emotional incongruity in Asian listeners
In order to recognize banter or sarcasm in social interactions, listeners must integrate verbal and vocal emotional expressions. Here, we investigated event-related potential correlates of this integration in Asian listeners. We presented emotional words spoken with congruous or incongruous emotional prosody. When listeners classified word meaning as positive or negative and ignored prosody, incongruous trials elicited a larger late positivity th…
Attraction in every sense: How looks, voice, movement and scent draw us to future lovers and friends
What makes someone attractive has been examined for faces, in terms of common preferences, and for opposite-sex interactions. We expanded on this by considering also other non-verbal modalities, personal preferences and same-sex interactions. We presented the face, body motion, voice and body odour from 61 non-verbal agents (34 women) as stimuli in an attractiveness rating to 71 perceivers (37 women). Our results showed that the modalities were d…
Stroking and Leaning: The Give and Take of Social Touch Between Humans and Their Pets
Task and sex modulate the brain response to emotional incongruity in Asian listeners
In order to recognize banter or sarcasm in social interactions, listeners must integrate verbal and vocal emotional expressions. Here, we investigated event-related potential correlates of this integration in Asian listeners. We presented emotional words spoken with congruous or incongruous emotional prosody. When listeners classified word meaning as positive or negative and ignored prosody, incongruous trials elicited a larger late positivity th…
Affective dimensions of odor perception: A comparison between Swiss, British, and Singaporean populations
Do affective responses to odors vary as a function of culture? To address this question, we developed two self-report scales in the United Kingdom (Liverpool: LEOS) and in Singapore (city of Singapore: SEOS), following the same procedure as used in the past to develop the Geneva Emotion and Odor Scale (GEOS: Chrea, Grandjean, Delplanque et al., 2009). The final scales were obtained by a three-step reduction of an initial pool of 480 affective ter…
Reach out to one and you reach out to many: Social touch affects third-party observers
Casual social touch influences emotional perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours of interaction partners. We asked whether these influences extend to third-party observers. To this end, we developed the Social Touch Picture Set comprising line drawings of dyadic interactions, half of which entailed publicly acceptable casual touch and half of which served as no-touch controls. In Experiment 1, participants provided basic image norms by rating how …
Vicarious social touch biases gazing at faces and facial emotions
Research has suggested that interpersonal touch promotes social processing and other-concern, and that women may respond to it more sensitively than men. In this study, we asked whether this phenomenon would extend to third-party observers who experience touch vicariously. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants (N = 64, 32 men and 32 women) viewed prime and target images with the intention of remembering them. Primes comprised line drawings …
More than one kind: Different sensory signatures and functions divide affectionate touch
The study of affectionate touch centers on gentle stroking. Yet friendly physical contact entails other actions, such as embracing, holding, kissing, leaning, petting, squeezing, or tickling. Here, we probed whether these actions are redundant or can be meaningfully differentiated by asking participants ( N = 161) to complete a few tasks for each action. Coloring of body maps emphasized touching of upper body hairy and glabrous skin, contrary to …
What Makes Touch Comfortable? An Examination of Touch Giving and Receiving in Two Cultures
This study examined how touch role and culture shape affective touch experiences. Germans ( N = 130) and Chinese ( N = 130) were surveyed once as toucher and once as touchee. For different touch actions, they (a) provided free-text descriptions of what prompts touch, (b) indicated with whom touch feels comfortable, and (c) highlighted areas of touch comfort on a body outline. Overall, touch was prompted by affectionate feelings, was more comforta…
When the Music’s No Good: Rhythms Prompt Interactional Synchrony But Impair Affective Communication Outcomes
Spontaneous motion synchrony between interaction partners benefits the interaction. Here we probed how musical rhythms, which are highly temporally organized, modulate this process. We video-taped conversations held in silence or with an auditory background that was metrical and regular (one measure looped), metrical and irregular (different measures in random order), non-metrical and regular, or non-metrical and irregular. Motion time-series der…
Musicality – Tuned to the melody of vocal emotions
Musicians outperform non‐musicians in vocal emotion perception, likely because of increased sensitivity to acoustic cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre. Yet, how musicians make use of these acoustic cues to perceive emotions, and how they might differ from non‐musicians, is unclear. To address these points, we created vocal stimuli that conveyed happiness, fear, pleasure or sadness, either in all acoustic cues, or selectively in e…
Stroking and Leaning: The Give and Take of Social Touch Between Humans and Their Pets
Attraction in every sense: How looks, voice, movement and scent draw us to future lovers and friends
What makes someone attractive has been examined for faces, in terms of common preferences, and for opposite-sex interactions. We expanded on this by considering also other non-verbal modalities, personal preferences and same-sex interactions. We presented the face, body motion, voice and body odour from 61 non-verbal agents (34 women) as stimuli in an attractiveness rating to 71 perceivers (37 women). Our results showed that the modalities were d…
Feeling "Pawsitively" Good: Human-Pet Touch Predicts Subjective Wellbeing
Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Perception (6 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (4 works) · Communication (4 works) · Feeling (4 works) · Multisensory perception and integration (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Art (3 works)