Affiliation: University of Geneva
Email: Marcello.Mortillaro@unige.ch

Biography

Marcello Mortillaro received his Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Milan in 2007. He is now Senior Scientist and Head of Applied Research at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva. His research investigates how to assess emotions and measure emotional competences, the role of emotional intelligence in several applied settings, as well as vocal, facial, and bodily expression of emotions. In his works he defines emotions from an appraisal perspective and views emotional intelligence as an ability organized along four main competences: emotion recognition, emotion understanding, emotion regulation, and emotion management. Marcello Mortillaro is co-author of the Geneva Emotional Competence Test to measure emotional intelligence in the workplace (GECo, Schlegel & Mortillaro, 2018) and the Body Action and Posture Coding System, one of the most advanced instruments to describe bodily movements and postures, (BAP coding system, Dael, Mortillaro, & Scherer, 2012; more info here). He directed several basic and applied research projects funded by both public bodies and the industry. Projects focused on themes as diverse as stress, automatic emotion recognition from facial expressions, the role of emotions in ethical choices, and positive emotions, among others.

List of Publications

Scherer K.R., Ellgring, H., Dieckmann, A., Unfried, M., & Mortillaro M. (2019). Dynamic Facial Expression of Emotion and Observer Inference. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 508.

Schuller, B., Weninger,, F., Zhang, Y., Ringeval, F., Batliner, A., Steidl, S., Eyben, F., Marchi, E., Vinciarelli, A., Scherer, K., Chetouani, M., & Mortillaro, M. (2019). Affective and Behavioural Computing: Lessons Learnt from the First Computational Paralinguistics Challenge. Computer Speech and Language, 53, 156-180.

Schlegel, K., & Mortillaro, M. (2018). The Geneva Emotional Competence Test (GECo): an ability measure of workplace emotional intelligence. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication.

Mortillaro, M., & Dukes, D. (2018). Jumping for joy: the importance of the body and of dynamics in the expression and recognition of positive emotions. Frontiers in Psychology , 9, 763.

Scherer, K.R., Mortillaro, M., Rotondi, I., Sergi, I., & Trznadel, S. (2018). Appraisal-driven facial actions as building blocks for emotion inference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(3), 358-379.

Soleymani, M., & Mortillaro, M. (2018). Behavioral and Physiological Responses to Visual Interest and Appraisals: Multimodal Analysis and Automatic Recognition. Frontiers in ICT - Human Media Interaction, 5, 17.

Dukes, D., Clément, F., Audrin, C., & Mortillaro, M. (2017). Looking beyond the static face in emotion recognition: The informative case of interest. Visual Cognition, 25 (4-6), 575-588..

Scherer, K., Mortillaro, M., & Mehu, M. (2017). Facial expression is driven by appraisal and generates appraisal inference. In J. M. Fernandez-Dols and J. A. Russell (Eds.), The science of Facial Expression (353-373). New York: Oxford University Press.

Mortillaro, M., & Mehu, M. (2015). Emotions: Methods of Assessment. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 7 (pp. 519-525). Oxford: Elsevier.

Mortillaro, M., Meuleman, B., & Scherer, K. R. (2015). Automated recognition of emotion appraisals. In J. Vallverdú (ed.), Handbook of Research on Synthesizing Human Emotion in Intelligent Systems and Robotics (pp.338-351). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, IGI Global.

Visch, V., Goudbeek, M.B., & Mortillaro, M. (2014). Robust anger: Recognition of deteriorated dynamic bodily emotion expressions. Cognition & Emotion, 28(5), 936-946.

Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2014). Stressed out: How stress develops and how to cope with it. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 6(1), 17-21.

Mortillaro, M., Ricci-Bitti, P.E., Bellelli, G., Galati, D., & Scherer, K.R. (2013). Pride is not created equal: variations between Northern and Southern Italiy. In K.R. Scherer and J.R. Fontaine (Eds.), Components of Emotional Meaning: A sourcebook (pp. 366-376). New York: Oxford University Press.

Weninger, F., Eyben F., Schuller B.. W., Mortillaro M., & Scherer K. R. (2013).  On the Acoustics of Emotion in Audio: What Speech, Music and Sound have in Common. Frontiers in Psychology. 4(292).

Scherer, K. R., Mortillaro, M., & Mehu, M. (2013).Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying the Production of Facial Expression of Emotion: A Componential Perspective. Emotion Review, 5(1), 47-53.

Mortillaro, M., Mehu, M., & Scherer, K.R. (2013). The evolutionary origin of multimodal synchronization in emotional expression. In E. Altenmüller, S. Schmidt, and E. Zimmerman (Eds.), Evolution of Emotional Communication: from Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to Speech and Music in Man (pp.3-25). New York: Oxford University Press.

Mehu, M., Mortillaro, M., Bänziger, T, & Scherer, K. R. (2012). Reliable facial muscles activation enhances recognisability and credibility of emotional expression. Emotion,12(4), 701-715.

Mortillaro, M., Meuleman, B., & Scherer, K. R. (2012). Advocating a componential appraisal model to guide emotion recognition. International Journal of Synthetic Emotions, 3(1), 18-32.

Dael, N., Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K.R. (2012). The Body Action and Posture coding system (BAP): Development and reliability. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 36, 97-121.

Dael, N., Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K.R. (2012). Emotion expression in body action and posture. Emotion. 12(5), 1085-1101.

Bänziger, T., Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K.R. (2012). Introducing the Geneva Multimodal Expression corpus for experimental research on emotion perception. Emotion, 12(5), 1161-1179.

Mortillaro, M., Mehu, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2011). Subtly different positive emotions can be distinguished by their facial expressions. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 262-271.

Scherer, K.R., Clark- Polner, E., & Mortillaro, M. (2011). In the eye of the beholder? Universality and cultural specificity in the expression and perception of emotion. International Journal of Psychology, 46, 401-435.

Glowinski, D., Dael, N., Camurri, A., Volpe, G., Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2011). Towards a minimal representation of affective gestures. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 2, 106-118.

Mohammadi, G.,. Vinciarelli, & Mortillaro, M. (2010). The voice of personality: Mapping vocal nonverbal behavior into trait attributions. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Social Signal Processing, pp. 17-20, Florence, 2010.

Mantovani, F., Confalonieri, L., Mortillaro, M., Realdon, O., Zurloni, V., & Anolli, L. (2010). The potential of affective computing in e-learning: the journey from theory to practice in the “Myself” project. In A. Tzanavari and N. Tapatsoulis (Eds.), Affective, Interactive and Cognitive Methods for E- Learning Design: Creating an Optimal Education Experience (pp. 260-274). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2009). Multimodal expression of emotion. In D. Sander & K. R.Scherer (Eds.), The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences(pp.268-269). New York: Oxford University Press.

Mortillaro, M., & Scherer, K. R. (2009). Bodily expression of emotion. In D. Sander & K. R. Scherer (Eds.), The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences (pp.78-79). New York: Oxford University Press.

Castellano, G., Mortillaro, M., Camurri, A., Volpe, G., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Automated analysis of body movement in emotionally expressive piano performances. Music Perception, 26, 103-120.

Zurloni, V., Mortillaro, M., Vescovo, A., & Anolli, L., Mantovani, F. (2008). Addressing emotions within e-learning systems. In T. T. Kidd & H. Song (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Instructional Systems and Technology (pp. 803-816). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Anolli, L., Mantovani, F., Balestra M., Kommers, P., Robotti, O., Salamin, A. D., Agliati, A., Realdon, O., Zurloni, V., Confalonieri, L., Mortillaro, M., Vescovo, A., Venturini, P., Wetterling, & Tarocchi, A. (2008). Experiential learning and affective computing for training soft-skills: Myself project. In T. T. Kidd & H. Song (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Instructional Systems and Technology (pp. 360- 372). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Anolli, L., Mortillaro, M., Zurloni, V., Confalonieri, L., Mantovani, F., (2008)."Affective computing" e apprendimento: analisi di dispositivi per il riconoscimento automatico delle emozioni all’interno di piattaforme di e-learning. In E. Magno Caldognetto and F. Cavicchio (Eds.), Aspetti Emotivi e Relazionali nell’E-Learning (pp.171-199). Firenze, IT: Firenze University Press.

Mortillaro, M. (2007). Multicomponential analysis of emotional experience. Study of expressive and physiological components and their implications for affective computing. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy.

Mantovani, F., Agliati, A., Mortillaro, M., Vescovo, A., & Zurloni V. (2006). Communication – Presence roundtrip: Travelling along theoretical, methodological and applicative connections. In G. Riva, M. T. Anguera, B. K. Wiederhold, & F. Mantovani, (Eds.), From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotion and Culture towards the Ultimate Communicative Experiences (pp.3-22). Amsterdam, The Netherlands; IOS Press.

Realdon, O., Zurloni V., Confalonieri, L., Mortillaro, M., & Mantovani, F., (2006). Learning Communication Skills through computer-based Interactive Simulations. In G. Riva, M. T. Anguera, B. K. Wiederhold, & F. Mantovani, (Eds.), From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotion and Culture towards the Ultimate Communicative Experiences (pp.281-303). Amsterdam, The Netherlands; IOS Press.

Anolli, L., Mantovani, F., Mortillaro, M., Vescovo, A., Agliati, A., Confalonieri, L., Realdon, O., Zurloni, V., & Sacchi, A. (2005). A Multimodal Database as a Background for Emotional Synthesis, Recognition and Training in E-Learning Systems. In J. Tao, T. Tan, & R. W. Picard (Eds.), Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction: First International Conference, ACII 2005, Beijing, China, October 22-24, 2005. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3784, (pp. 566 – 573).