CFP: Valence Asymmetries - First Conference

Valence Asymmetries Conference

The Valence Asymmetries ERC team is happy to announce that it will be organizing the first VALENCE ASYMMETRIES conference on March 19th-20th 2026 at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. 

This interdisciplinary event will discuss themes which are central to the Valence Asymmetries project, including the role of valence in perception, emotion, morality, language, and communication. Discussion will draw upon insights from philosophy, psychology, and linguistics.

Call for submissions: We have room for 4-6 talks to be selected from open submissions. Each selected talk will be assigned a 50 min slot, including discussion. 

We encourage submissions from the fields of cogntiive science, linguistics, psychology, philosophy of mind and language, value-theory, ethics and metaethics.

We especially encourage submissions on the relation between value, valence, and polarity; theoretical and empirical accounts of valence asymmetries in language, including in negative strengthening, scalar inferences, and irony; the asymmetry between virtue and vice, and between praise and blame, in normative and applied ethics; as well as other discussions of valence asymmetries in linguistics, cognitive science, moral psychology, and cognate areas.

If you are interested in presenting your work at this venue, please submit an abstract to [email protected] by Oct 13th, with the subject line “valence asymmetries submission”. The abstracts should be 2 pages, with an optional third page for figures and references. 

Contact: [email protected]

Event page: http://eventum.upf.edu/go/valenceasymmetries

Website: https://www.upf.edu/web/valence-asymmetries

This event is funded by Isidora Stojanovic’s ERC Advanced Grant “Valence Asymmetries: the positive, the negative, the good and the bad in language, mind and morality” (GA n° 101142133).