Understanding how emotions develop in social worlds.
I study children’s socio-emotional development, with a focus on how they express their own emotions and understand those of others.
Child Development and Education Research Institute · University of Amsterdam
About
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Child Development and Education Research Institute at the University of Amsterdam. My research examines children’s socio-emotional development, particularly how children express their own and understand others’ emotions.
I investigate how components of emotion—including facial expressions, body language, and physiological change—shape social behaviour and development. A central interest is in self-conscious emotions, including embarrassment and pride, and in the role of early parent–child emotional interactions in their emergence.
More recently, I have expanded this work to cross-cultural and comparative contexts, investigating how emotions are expressed and perceived across societies, developmental stages, and nonhuman animals.
Research
My work combines developmental, social, and comparative approaches to examine emotion as an embodied and relational process.
- Self-conscious emotionsThe developmental emergence of embarrassment, pride, and related social-emotional expressions.
- Parent–child interactionHow synchrony, mind-mindedness, and emotional socialisation relate to children’s emotional development.
- Emotion perceptionAge-related, cross-cultural, and multimodal changes in recognising and producing emotion.
- Comparative emotion scienceWhat nonhuman primates and human development can reveal about emotion and social behaviour.
Publications
Peer-reviewed publications
- Riddell, C., Jensen, C., & Carter, O. (2018). Cognitive enhancement and coping in an Australian university student sample. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 2(1), 63–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-017-0046-z
- Riddell, C., Kret, M. E., Zijlstra, T., & Nikolic, M. (2023). Fearful apes, happy apes – is fearfulness associated with uniquely human cooperation? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e8. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22001911
- Riddell, C., Nikolić, M., Dusseldorp, E., & Kret, M. E. (2024). Age-related changes in emotion recognition across childhood: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 150(9), 1094–1117. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000442
- Riddell, C., Nikolić, M., & Kret, M. E. (2025). Putting the social in emotions: The effect of audience presence on pride and embarrassment across ontogeny. Developmental Science, 28, e70024. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70024
- Riddell, C.*, Zijlstra, T.*, Nikolić, M., & Kret, M. E. (in press). Play face mimicry across development: Comparative insights from human infants, adults, and orangutans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Shared first authorship
Under review & in preparation
- Riddell, C., Colonnesi, C., Fischer, A., Jørgensen, T., & Nikolić, M. (under review). The early ontogeny of self-conscious emotions during infancy.
- Riddell, C., Sauter, D., & Nikolić, M. (under review). Revisiting the “self” in self-conscious emotions: A registered replication report.
- Riddell, C., Nikolić, M., Fischer, A., Önal Ertugrul, I., Zeegers, M., Bögels, S., & Colonnesi, C. (under review). Emotion socialization in the spotlight: Early parent-infant synchrony, mind-mindedness, and children’s later expressions of shyness.
- Riddell, C., Nikolić, M., van Bockstaele, B., & Kret, M. E. (in preparation). Working in sync: Children and adults' cooperation and interpersonal liking in face-to-face interactions.
- Riddell, C., Roth, T., Yamamoto, H., Tanaka, A., Kret, M., & Nikolić, M. (in preparation). Cross-cultural emotions reconsidered: The recognition and production of emotions across age in Japan and the Netherlands.
Contact
Christopher Riddell, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Child Development and Education Research Institute
University of Amsterdam
Research correspondence: