Understanding Others - Integration of Social Cognitive and Affective Processes

• Applicant: Dana Schneider, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Theoretical Philosophy
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 387279900

To interact and communicate effectively, it is essential to understand the thoughts and emotions of the person one is interacting with. There is a rich research tradition on phenomena that enable an understanding of others. This research investigates social cognitive aspects (like ´Theory of Mind´), social affective aspects (like empathy) as well as related social behaviors (like joint actions, prosocial behavior, aggressive behaviors or moral judgments). Despite progress in these different research domains, there have been very few attempts to link social cognitive and affective phenomena, processes and mechanisms as well as related behaviors in an overarching theoretical framework that integrates findings from the disciplines of philosophy, psychological science, and neuroscience. Here, we identified that construct definitions should be newly addressed and that specificities and relationships of the involved target agents across these different social interaction phenomena have not been explored in an integrative manner. Further, we recognized that methodological challenges in terms of commonly employed tests and measures as well as technical challenges regarding study design and data analysis strategies were never approached within one comprehensive framework. To address these points, the proposed scientific network aims to bring together experts from cognitive and affective research domains in a series of interdisciplinary workshops.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Co-Investigator: Olga Klimecki, Ph.D.