Program of the workshop
"Culture-originated Affect" on the 18th Oct.

10:00 - 11:00 KEYNOTE SPEECH (hybrid)

"Kawaii" as an emotion: Understanding its concept and psychological effects

Hiroshi NITTONO

He received his PhD in Human Sciences from Osaka University in 1998. From 2005 to 2016 he was an associate professor of Cognitive Psychophysiology at Hiroshima University and is currently a full professor of Experimental Psychology at Osaka University. His research interests revolve around Psychophysiology and Engineering Psychology.

ABSTRACT

“Kawaii” is one of the most popular adjectives in Japan today. Although it roughly corresponds to “cute” in English, its connotation is slightly different from that of “cute”; this word is used not only as an adjective that describes the perceivable features of an object, but also as an adjective that expresses a person’s affective feelings toward the object. In this talk, I will propose a model that distinguishes “kawaisa” (the noun form of “kawaii”) as physical attributes and “kawaii” as an emotion, illustrate some psychological effects related to this emotion, and discuss how this view can be useful in the field of application.

11:00 - 12:20 ORAL PRESENTATION (hybrid)

  1. Teppei Teraji, Keito Shiroshita, Masashi Komori, Koyo Nakamura, Maiko Kobayashi and Katsumi Watanabe:
    Exploring facial traits associated with beauty and cuteness based on an alternative forced-choice task

  2. Chen Feng, Peeraya Sripian, Tipporn Laohakangvalvit, Toshiaki Tazawa, Saaya Sakai and Midori Sugaya:
    Preliminary Study on the Transition of Bio-emotion using Aroma Stimuli

  3. Michiko Ohkura, Narumon Jadram and Tipporn Laohakangvalvit: Comparison of Positive Feelings for Motions of CG Kawaii and Cool Robots

  4. David Berque and Hiroko Chiba: A Proposal for Using Kawaii Companion Robots to Support Student Mental Health

12:20 - 12:30 EXPLANATION of ACTIVITY (hybrid)

12:30 - 15:00 LUNCH and ACTIVITY to FIND THE MOST AFFECTIVELY VALUABLE OR THE MOST KAWAII AROUND WHERE YOU ARE (real)
If you are in or near the conference venue, let's walk together.

15:00 - 17:00 DISCUSSION about THE VARIOUS ASPECTS of "THE MOST AFFECTIVELY VALUABLE" and CLOSING REMARKS (hybrid)

Please share your photos here (Feel free to create your own folder):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1h9RxP7uUF2alWNz9NXMNTXCH_NV9vax5?usp=sharing