Ordnungsbildung und Erkenntnis bedingen einander. Erkenntnis setzt die Beobachtung von Ordnungsstrukturen voraus oder deren Schöpfung durch Abstraktion und Modellbildung. Beiträge aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen universitärer Forschung untersuchen Strukturen, die einen Bezug haben zu (partiell) autonomen Akteuren (beziehungsweise Agierenden, Agenten) und den dynamischen Prozessen, in denen sie entwickelt werden. Dabei ablaufende Erkenntnisprozesse erfordern interobjektiv erfahrbare, teilweise auch in Symbolik und Ritualen fassbare Ordnungsstrukturen, auch wenn diese erst simultan mit Handlungs- oder Erkenntnisprozessen entstehen. Rekursive Bezüge können zu Formen der Selbstorganisation führen. Bei höher entwickelten Strukturen können Aspekte des Wissens, Lernens (und Vergessens) einbezogen werden und zusätzlich durch emotionale Zustände verstärkt oder abgeschwächt werden. Wie entstehen Struktur und Ordnung? Wie werden sie stabilisiert, modifiziert, revolutioniert, restabilisiert? Wie werden sie zerstört und aufgelöst? Wie lässt sich das Verhältnis von Ordnung/Struktur und Wandel/Prozess fassen und (gegebenenfalls formal oder im Rechner) modellieren? Welche institutionalisierten Mechanismen spielen dabei welche Rolle? Wie prägen diese Mechanismen die Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Akteuren um "richtiges" und "falsches" Handeln und " richtiges" und "falsches" Wissen von diesem Handeln (Realitätsdefinitionen, Ordnungs- und Zielvorstellungen, Legitimationen)? Welche Wechselwirkungen bestehen zwischen "stummen" Verhaltensordnungen (Handeln) und "beredter" symbolvermittelter Reflexion eben dieser Verhaltensordnungen (Reden und Wissen)? Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler hatten sich am 5.9.2005 an der Universität Hamburg zu einem Workshop über "Ordnungsbildung und Erkenntnisprozesse" zusammengefunden. In diesem Band sind zahlreiche der gehaltenen Beiträge gesammelt.
Abstract Political representatives frequently make decisions with far-reaching implications for citizens and societies. Most of these decisions are choices in situations in which the probabilities of gains and losses are hard to estimate. Although decision-making is crucial to politics, existing research has hardly ever addressed the political representation of traits that notably influence decision-making. One such trait is risk propensity; that is, an individual’s willingness to take risk. Using a unique dataset consisting of representative samples of the German Federal Parliament, four German State Parliaments, and the general German population, the present study investigates the degree to which political representatives’ risk propensity resembles their constituents’ appetite for risk. Not only descriptive results but even after using matching techniques and controlling for several potentially confounding variables, the study shows that political representatives are significantly more risk loving than the average citizen across several domains of risk taking. The implications of this finding are twofold. First, it points at a representation gap suggesting that politicians tend towards riskier choices than their voters, which not only affects politicians themselves but the entire polity. Second, it suggests a useful ‘division of labor’ according to which risk-loving politicians are prepared to take risks in exceptional situations, which their constituents would eschew.
Refugees are at an increased risk of mental health problems and low subjective well-being. Living circumstances in the host country are thought to play a vital role in shaping these health outcomes, which, in turn, are prerequisites for successful integration. Using data from a representative survey of 4325 adult refugees who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016, we investigated how different living conditions, especially those subject to integration policies, are associated with psychological distress and life satisfaction using linear regression models. Our findings show that an uncertain legal status, separation from family, and living in refugee housing facilities are related to higher levels of distress and decreased life satisfaction. Being employed, contact to members of the host society, and better host country language skills, by contrast, are related to reduced distress and higher levels of life satisfaction. These associations should inform decision making in a highly contested policy area.
Collective emotions are at the heart of any society and become evident in gatherings, crowds, or responses to widely salient events. However, they remain poorly understood and conceptualized in scientific terms. Here, we provide first steps towards a theory of collective emotions. We first review accounts of the social and cultural embeddedness of emotion that contribute to understanding collective emotions from three broad perspectives: face-to-face encounters, culture and shared knowledge, and identification with a social collective. In discussing their strengths and shortcomings and highlighting areas of conceptual overlap, we translate these views into a number of bottom–up mechanisms that explain collective emotion elicitation on the levels of social cognition, expressive behavior, and social practices.
Abstract This contribution investigates the function of emotion in relation to social norms, both in natural and artificial societies. First, the authors briefly illustrate that norms as socially shared mental objects play a crucial role in the dynamics of social structures and social order, in natural societies as well as in artificial systems. Second, the authors address the question how norms are enforced and thereby maintained throughout a social system. In this respect, it is shown that emotions play a crucial role by providing means for intrinsic gratification and sanctioning. The authors consider emotion related sanctions as a cost equivalent to and in many situations perhaps even more efficient than, e.g. , resource-driven penalties. Consequently, agents' anticipation of negative emotional outcomes as a consequence of deviant behaviour is supposed to exert social control. Third, the authors outline the possibilities of an application to the socionic multi-agent architecture SONAR
Emotionen erscheinen uns wie Objekte, die wir in unserem Inneren erkennen. Tatsächlich aber können wir sie weder direkt beobachten noch benennen, wie wir es bei äußeren Gegenständen gewohnt sind. Wittgenstein hat dies mit seinem berühmten »Privatsprachenargument« gezeigt. Wie ist es dennoch möglich, dass wir über Emotionen sprechen können? Die Wendung, die die vorliegende Untersuchung diesem Problem gibt, besteht darin, die Entwicklung und soziale Formung des Sprechens über Emotionen zu analysieren: Auf welcher biologischen Grundlage entwickeln Menschen diese Fähigkeit? Wie erkennt ein kleines Kind im Sprechenlernen seine Emotionen, sodass es weiß, welche Wörter ihnen entsprechen? Welche sozialen Voraussetzungen müssen für den Erwerb dieser Fähigkeit erfüllt sein und wie werden sie in gesellschaftlichen Prozessen verändert und weiterentwickelt? Diese Fragen werden aus der Perspektive der Philosophie, Psychologie und Entwicklungspsychologie, der Neurobiologie und Soziologie beantwortet. Der Weg führt von der Innensicht (Ich-Perspektive) des Kindes über die empathische Teilhabe seiner Bezugspersonen (Du-Perspektive) zu alltäglichen sozialen Interaktionen, in denen das emotionale Geschehen fortlaufend geformt wird (Er-Perspektive). Die Autoren zeigen dergestalt, wie die zunächst biologisch gegebene Emotion (das Emotionsperzept) in der Sphäre der symbolisch und sprachlich vermittelten Kommunikation re-konfiguriert wird.
This article expands on the discussion of social and cultural factors for refugees’ feelings of belonging in the receiving society and assesses democratic, civic, and moral values as predictors of belonging. On the one hand, existing research considers shared values between refugees and the receiving society as hallmarks of integration. From this perspective, shared values (or value consensus) are considered predictors of refugees’ feelings of belonging and the formation of social bonds with host-country citizens. On the other hand, values are seen as part of refugees’ cultural capital. From this perspective, liberal and civic value contents, in particular, may promote feelings of belonging, irrespective of whether these values are widely shared with citizens of the host society. This article investigates these contrasting hypotheses, using data from a representative panel of refugees in Germany. Results show that refugees holding liberal democratic values are more likely to experience feelings of welcome in the receiving society. When operationalizing belonging also in terms of refugees spending time with host-country citizens, shared democratic and secular values become more important. Finally, this article suggests that the effect of value consensus on refugees’ feelings of welcome is mediated by how much time refugees spend with host-country citizens members. Taken together, our findings emphasize that in the context of international migration, values are important hallmarks of social integration, although this should not be reduced to popular calls for shared values between immigrants and host-country citizens.
A review of recent theories of emotion indicates close interconnections between emotion and social norms in human societies. We consider the possibility of implementing these mutual influences in a multi-agent system in order to establish dynamic and flexible control structures. According to some theories, emotion plays a key role in establishing and maintaining these structures by fostering the internalization of and compliance with social norms. Here we introduce a Petri Net based approach to modeling the emergence and maintenance of social norms in multi-agent systems.
The mental health and well-being of refugees are both prerequisites for and indicators of social integration. Using data from the first wave of a representative prospective panel of refugees living in Germany, we investigated how different living conditions, especially those subject to integration policies, are associated with experienced distress and life satisfaction in newly-arrived adult refugees. In particular, we investigated how the outcome of the asylum process, family reunification, housing conditions, participation in integration and language courses, being in education or working, social interaction with the native population, and language skills are related to mental health and well-being. Our findings show that negative and pending outcomes of the asylum process and separation from family are related to higher levels of distress and lower levels of life satisfaction. Living in communal instead of private housing is also associated with greater distress and lower life satisfaction. Being employed, by contrast, is related to reduced distress. Contact to members of the host society and better host country language skills are also related to lower levels of distress and higher levels of life satisfaction. Our findings offer insights into correlates of refugees’ well-being in the first years after arrival in a host country, a dimension of integration often overlooked in existing studies, thus having the potential to inform decision-making in a highly contested policy area.
We are pleased that all the commentators seem to agree that a theory-driven integration across disciplines is a worthwhile endeavor to better understand the social constitution of emotion. In our reply, we first take up the idea of relating affect control theory (ACT) to cultural priming and suggest links to an ACT-inspired constraint satisfaction explanation of priming. Second, we address reservations concerning ACT’s capability to account for emotions with nonconceptual content and to explain stability and change in affective meanings. Third, we clarify the relation of affect control theory to psychological constructionism, in particular with regard to conceptualizations of culture and society. Finally, we suggest that computational models are an adequate tool to address multilevel issues in the study of emotion.
