Visualizing our Changing World: Visual Methods in Social Psychology Days 2025

Visual methods have become essential tools for capturing the emotional, symbolic, and cultural dimensions of social life, especially in times of rapid change. Images carry meanings that words cannot always express. They travel fast, cross linguistic boundaries, and shape how we perceive ourselves, others, and the societies we live in.

Social Psychology Days 2025 brings together  several scholars who use visual materials—from memes and new images to drawings—to understand how people respond to, cope with, and make sense of the world we live in. Whether it’s about migration, parenting in the digital age or political resistance through dehumanizing imagery, visual data have the potential to reveal tensions and contradictions that often remain hidden in verbal accounts.

If you’re interested in visual social psychology, many of our presenters are engaging directly with visual methods or working with visual data.

Nina Vlodder will explore how Finnish parents construct ideals of parenthood on Instagram.

Mariman Mabrouk will propose an  analysis of protest images portraying French President Macron as a pig, a king, and trash—unpacking the power of visual metaphors in political critique.

Sanna Raudaskoski and Satu Valkonen will investigate how smartphones disrupt the ideal of parental presence.

Hanna Pohjola will examine how digital dance can embody hopeful futures and evoke emotional resonance through the lens of neuroscience.

Jennifer De Paola will explore how diverse youth in Finland visually represent their future through drawings.

Jari Martikainen will present participatory visual and arts-based methods in researching social representations.

Hanna Ristolainen will investigate the politics of care through newspaper depictions of eldercare.

Outi Hakola will explore the symbolic portrayal of grief in documentaries about dying children.

Hadi Farahani will investigate will examine how youth from diverse cultural backgrounds assign meaning to places.

These presentations invite participants to consider how visual research methods can illuminate the affective undercurrents and symbolic landscapes of our changing world. As societies face cultural, technological, and political transformations, visual approaches in social psychology offer a powerful lens for understanding the present—and imagining what comes next.

Welcome to the conversation. Tervetuloa mukaan keskusteluun!

Written by: Jennifer De Paola, Postdoctoral Researcher, Social Psychology, University of Eastern Finland