This workshop explores the role of value experience in emotion regulation. Emotional responses are typically elicited by things we deeply care about—values we perceive to be at stake. A key emotional capacity lies in the ability to critically reassess the values underlying our emotional responses and, when necessary, to revise or realign them.
The workshop examines the psychological processes involved in this capacity—particularly inner speech, self-regulation, and a broader notion of agency—from a phenomenological perspective. It highlights the challenges of navigating value, especially in contexts involving mental health struggles and in digital environments where people engage with artificial intelligence agents and encounter unique demands on their emotional self-understanding.
Outline programme:
09:30 – 09:45: Welcome and Introduction
09:45 – 10:15: Anna Bortolan: Emotional Labour, Value, and Affective Injustice
10:15 – 10:45: Lucy Osler: Affect Regulation and World-building with LLMs Part I: Identity, Self-Narratives, and Sycophantic AI
10:45 – 11:00: Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30: Joel Krueger: Affect Regulation and World-building with LLMs Part II: AI Gossip, Affective Harms, and Resistance
11:30 – 12:00: Philipp Schmidt-Boddy: The Phenomenology of Affective Self-regulation, Agency, and Inner Speech
12:00 – 12:15: Coffee Break
12:15 – 12:45: Arkadiusz Gut: Emotional Socialization and Conflict Resolution in Preschool Children: Caregiver Roles, Peer Relationships, and Cultural Contexts – A Qualitative Perspective
12:45 – 14:00: Lunch Break
14:00 – 14:30: Zuzanna Aleksandra Rucińska: Sense-making with Chatbots: Enactivist and Phenomenological Perspectives
14:30 – 15:00: Marcin Moskalewicz: Toward AI-Assisted Phenomenology: Exploring Borderline Affect
15:00 – 15:15: Coffee Break
15:15 – 16:00: Final Discussion
Organisation: Philipp Schmidt-Boddy & Marcin Moskalewicz
Part of the Phenomenology and Mental Health Network, The Collaborating Centre for Values-based practice in Health and Social Care, St. Catherine College, in cooperation with Ideas Research Institute, Warsaw, and Heidelberg University Hospital [Project: „‘Getting Your Act Together‘ – The Phenomenology of Affective Self-Regulation, Agency, and Inner Speech“, German Research Foundation (DFG) – Project Number 543866258; PI: Philipp Schmidt-Boddy.