Morgane Vanhaelen

Morgane Vanhaelen Doctoral Student Unit of Clinical Psychology: Emotion, Cognition, Health    Address: Department of Psychology Catholic University of Louvain Place du Cardinal Mercier 10 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium  Phone: +32 (0)10474751  Fax.: +32 (0)10474834  E-Mail:        Research domains    Representative publications

Research domains

During my thesis, I worked on the effects of depression on the evaluation of facial expressions. More specifically, I worked on detection and identification of gradual changing facial expressions in a depressive population.

Now, the research interest of my PhD concerns emotions and more particularly the perception of other’s emotional facial expressions. Indeed, to interact with other people in an adaptive way, we have to, among other things, correctly detect and identify other’s facial expressions. If the perception of expressions is biased, interpersonal difficulties can emerge.

I am more mainly interested in the effects of social anxiety on the evaluation of facial expressions. The difficulties encountered by socially anxious people to interact with other’s can be partly explained by evaluative biases in emotional facial expressions. Moreover, I would like to study the possibility that theses biases can influence behaviour and decision making.

On the other hand, I also have an interest in the interpersonal outcomes of non-verbal mimicry, in social and in therapeutic contexts.

Representative publications

coming soon