Rate My Professor Peter Koval

Professor Peter Koval is a Professor in Psychology at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a Masters (Research) from the University of Melbourne, and a Bachelors degree. As co-director of the Functions of Emotion in Everyday Life (FEEL) Lab, Koval's research lies at the intersection of social, personality, and clinical psychology, focusing on the dynamics of emotional processes in daily life. He investigates how people experience and regulate emotions in response to everyday events, and how these processes relate to well-being and psychological functioning. Employing ecological momentary assessment methods, such as smartphone-based experience sampling, his work bridges laboratory findings with real-world emotional experiences, addressing topics like emotion regulation strategies, emotional inertia, affect dynamics in relation to depressive symptoms, and the role of emotions in contexts such as digital technology interactions, COVID-19 resilience, and encounters with art.

Koval has authored highly influential publications, including 'The regulation of negative and positive affect in daily life' (Brans et al., Emotion, 2013), 'Affect dynamics in relation to depressive symptoms: Variable, unstable or inert?' (Koval et al., Emotion, 2013), 'Getting stuck in depression: The roles of rumination and emotional inertia' (Koval et al., Cognition & Emotion, 2012), 'The wisdom to know the difference: Strategy-situation fit in emotion regulation in daily life is associated with well-being' (Haines et al., Psychological Science, 2016), and 'Affective dynamics in psychopathology' (Trull et al., Emotion Review, 2015). His research has garnered over 9,800 citations on Google Scholar. Koval has received the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA, DE190100203) and serves as chief investigator on multiple ARC Discovery Projects, such as DP160102252. Through the FEEL Lab, he advances understanding of emotion functions in complex daily environments, contributing significantly to affective science and its applications to mental health.