Biography

Training and academic positions: Agneta Fischer graduated in theoretical psychology at Leiden University (cum laude) and obtained her PhD on a dissertation entitled 'Emotion Scripts' at the same University in 1991. Since that year she was employed by the University of Amsterdam at the Department of Social Psychology, where she has held a number of research and teaching positions. From 1998-2003 she held a professorship from the De Beauvoir foundation on Gender and Management. From 2003 onwards she has a Professorship in the department of Social Psychology on Emotions and Affective Processes.

Administrative positions: From 2001-2005 she was leader of the programgroup of Social Psychology. From 2006-2012 she was chair of the Psychology Department at the UvA. From 2012-2018 she was Director of the Psychology Research Institute at the UvA, and from 2018 - 2024 she was dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the UvA.

National activities: She has been chair of the Dutch Association of Social Psychologists (ASPO) from 2012-2018, and has been a member of the board of the Kurt Lewin Institute from 2007-2013, and she has been member of various different NWO committees. 

International activities: From 2005-2009, she was president of ISRE (International Society of Research on Emotions) and she is co-director of CERE (Consortium of European Emotion Researchers). She was chief-editor of Cognition and Emotion (together with Carien van Reekum) from 2012-2017, and member of the editorial boards of Emotion, Emorion Review, Social Psychology Personality and Science, and the European Review of Social Psychology.

Current research interests

The general theme of my research is the influence of social context on emotion, emotion recognition and emotion regulation. Below I describe four lines of research.

1. Hate, anger, contempt, revenge. A fourth line of research is concerned with extreme negative emotions, and their social functions. Why do we have them and what are they good for? See the papers and bookchapters on this topic.

2. Emotions and populism. A EU funded project (with David Abadi and Jan Willem Duyvendak) on the role of emotions in populism has resulted in various publications on this topic. 

3. Recognition of emotions. Another line of research focuses on the way in which social cues, like status or gender influence the recognition of emotions. To examine this we have developed a new set of emotional faces in our lab (see the ADFES link). We currently examine whether differences in emotion granularity (being able to differentiate between emotions) influences emotion recognition. We also examine (together with Disa Sauter, and YongQi Cong) Dutch recognition of Chinese emotions and vice versa, looking at a range of different emotions, both spontaneous and posed. 

4. Interpersonal emotion regulation. Together with Disa Sauter and Lisanne Pauw we work on a project on how individuals regulate each other's emotion. We have some recent publications in Cognition and Emotion on this topic (see publications).4.

5. Emotional mimicry and contagion. We have shown that emotional mimicry does not occur in all circumstances, but depends on the social context and type of emotion. Together with Ursula Hess, I have proposed a Social Context Model of Emotional Mimicry, in which we argue that in the absence of an affiliative cue or tendency, individuals do not mimic their partners. For that same reason, anger and disgust are less likely to be mimicked, whereas happiness and sadness are most likely to be mimicked. We are currently investigating to what extent people mimic crying, and under what circumstances.

Books and edited volumes

Fischer, A.H. (Ed.) (2000). Emotion and gender: Social Psychological Perspectives.London : Cambridge University Press.

Manstead,A.S.R., Frijda, N.H., & Fischer, A.H. (Eds.) (2004). Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium. New York: Cambridge University press.

Parkinson, B., Fischer, A.H., & Manstead, A.S.R. (2005). Emotion in social relations: Cultural, group and interpersonal processes. New York: Psychology Press.

Doosje, B. & Fischer, A. H. (Eds.)(2005). Niet boos, maar teleurgesteld. Emoties in het dagelijks leven . Schiedam: Scriptum.

Fischer, A.H. (2010). De zin en onzin van emoties. Amsterdam: Prometheus. 

Hess, U. & Fischer, A. H. (Eds.) (2016). Emotional Mimicry in Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A selection of publications before 2008

Refereed journals English

Fischer, A.H. (1993). Sex differences in emotionality: Fact or stereotype? Feminism and Psychology, 3 , 303-318.

Fischer, A.H. & Jansz, J. (1995). Emotions and Western personhood. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 25, 59-81.

Timmers, M., Fischer, A.H. & Manstead, A.S.R. (1998). Gender differences in the motives for regulating emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 974-986.

Fischer, A., Manstead,A.S.R. & Rodriguez, P.M. (1999). The role of honor-based versus individualistic values in conceptualizing pride, shame, and anger: Spanish and Dutch cultural prototypes. Cognition and Emotion, 13, 149-179.

Jakobs, E., Manstead, A.S.R. & Fischer, A.H. (1999). Social motives and subjective determinants of facial displays: The case of smiling. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 424-436.

Rodriguez Mosquera, P. M., Manstead, A. S. R., & Fischer, A. H. (2000). The role of honor-related values in the elicitation, experience and communication of pride, shame and anger. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 7, 833-845.

Jakobs, E., Manstead, A. S.R., &Fischer, A.H. (2001). Social context effects on facialactivity in a negative emotional setting. Emotion, 1,1, 51-70.

Manstead, A. S. R. & Fischer, A. H. (2002). Culture and emotion: Beyond the universality-relativity dichotomy. Introduction to Culture and Emotion, Special Issue of Cognition and Emotion, 16, 1-9.

Rodriguez, P. M., Manstead, A. S. R., & Fischer, A. H. (2002). The role of honor concerns in emotional reactions to offenses. Special Issue of Cognition and Emotion: Culture and emotion, 16, 143-165.

Timmers, M., Fischer, A. H., & Manstead, A. S. R (2003). Ability versus vulnerability: Beliefs about men's and women's emotional behavior. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 41-63.

Zaalberg, R., Manstead, A.S.R., & Fischer, A.H. (2004) Relations between emotions, display rules, social motives andfacial behavior. Cognition and Emotion,18, 183-207.

Fischer, A. H., Rodriguez, P. M., vanVianen, E.A.M., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2004). Gender and culture differences in emotion. Emotion, 4 , 87-94.

Fischer, A. H., Rotteveel, M.,Evers, C., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2004). Emotional assimilation: How we are influenced by others' emotions. Cahier de Psychologie Cognitive, 22, 223-245.

Van Zomeren, M., Spears, R., Fischer, A. H., & Leach, C. W. (2004). Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining Collective Action Tendencies Through Group-Based Anger and Group Efficacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 , 649-664.

Evers, C. A. M., Fischer, A. H., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2005). Anger and social appraisal: A spicy sex difference. Emotion , 3 , 258-266.

Pennekamp, S., Doosje, B., Zebel, S. & Fischer, A. H (2007). The past and the pending: The antecedents and consequences of group-based anger in historically and currently disadvantaged groups. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 10 , 41-57.

Fischer, A. H. & Roseman, I. J. (2007). Beat them or ban them: The characteristics and social functions of anger and contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 103-115.

Van Zomeren, M., Fischer, A. H., & Spears, R. (2007). Testing the limits of tolerance: How intergroup anxiety amplifies negative responses to out-group initiated contact.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33.