The
long-term goal of this project is an integrative and interdisciplinary
approach to emotion. Combining theoretical and empirical accounts from
neuroscience, psychology, and sociology the role of emotion in the
self-society dynamic is examined, whereas emotion is regarded as an
independent as well as a dependent variable. Emotions and especially
their unconscious components are considered a bidirectional mediator
between social structures and individual action. Conceptually, the
analysis distinguishes between emotion on three levels of abstraction:
micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. The micro-level analysis explores the
societal influences on the interconnection of emotion and (social)
cognition, in particular with respect to beliefs and decision making
and with further references to the neural architecture underlying the
elicitation of emotions. Analysis of the meso-level aims at explaining
how these mechanisms are mediated and communicated to other actors in
social interactions. Central frame of reference is the social situation
and the data it provides to an actor's sensory information processing
system and the emotion elicitation process. One hypothesis is that
emotion generation is not based on raw data perceived from the social
situation, but rather on data filtered by means of social cognition.
This, in consequence, leads to "schematic" emotions which, via their
influence on decision making and action, reproduce their causal
societal origins. The macro-level investigation shows how instances of
social structural configurations (e.g. norms, power, status, resources,
expectations) affect emotion processing by generating corresponding
representations and mental objects which are part of the
cognition-emotion interrelation and which are supposed to be relatively
homogeneous within a social unit. Furthermore, the regulation of
emotion (automatic and intentional) is supposed to function as a
"top-level" social control operator.
Duration: since 06/2002
Keywords: Emotions, Social Structures, Micro-Macro Link, Social Theory
[C.v.Scheve]
[TGI]
