Thomas Ganzetti’s research investigates how observing others’ emotional displays can help to understand how certain behaviours are evaluated in unfamiliar cultural contexts. In fact, observed emotional displays may provide a privileged access to the detection of social norms and ways of doing, enabling to acquire knowledge which allows to become a member of a social group without needing direct communication and interaction with others. 

He will engage the audience by making concrete examples of unfamiliar instrumental action performances (maybe also performing them in reality), showing how the observation of emotional displays targeting them can influence the prediction regarding how other individuals of a social group will also react when observing them. 

He will highlight, in simple and intuitive terms, the fact that lack of familiarity with the target of an emotional displays (typical of unfamiliar cultural content) influences the impact of the observed emotional display in our predictions, and more generally how much others’ emotions influence our perception and understanding of the environment.