Descrizione del progetto
Una nuova teoria per esplorare le questioni fondamentali della psicologia sociale
L’agentività (influenza, intraprendenza e autorità) e la comunione (benevolenza, prosocialità e onestà) sono le due dimensioni più basilari nella cognizione, nella concezione di sé e nella personalità. Note come le due grandi dimensioni (Big Two), l’agentività riguarda il raggiungimento dei propri obiettivi e il successo personale, mentre la comunione si incentra sulla formazione di legami e sull’andare d’accordo con le altre persone. Finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, il progetto ACT intende proporre e verificare la teoria sull’agentività e la comunione (ACT, Agency-Communion Theory) per spiegare perché queste due grandi dimensioni siano così importanti per gli esseri umani. A tal fine, il progetto svolgerà esperimenti di laboratorio e impiegherà modelli evolutivi formali, megadati e studi panel. Secondo l’ACT, le due grandi dimensioni sono componenti cruciali per le iniziative culturali degli esseri umani e per i notevoli traguardi evolutivi raggiunti dagli stessi.
Obiettivo
The Big Two of agency (influence, resourcefulness, authority) and communion (benevolence, prosociality, honesty) are fundamental to human social cognition, the self-concept, and personality. The Big Two must have a tremendously important function for humans, otherwise they were not that fundamental to human psychology. Yet, what is this function? State-of-the-art answers explain the function of the Big Two either in social cognition or in the self-concept or in personality and those answers contradict each other in critical ways. Here, I propose the first all-encompassing answer to the functional question of the Big Two in social cognition and the self-concept and personality. My answer comes in the form of a novel theory: Agency-Communion Theory (ACT) of Social Learning and Cultural Activity. According to ACT, the Big Two are the chief enablers of high-fidelity social learning. Never before have the Big Two been considered relevant for high-fidelity social learning, but the latter is widely seen as the reason for humans’ capacity to build culture and thrive by cultural activity—humans’ most powerful evolutionary strategy. Thus, ACT considers the Big Two the essential building blocks of human cultural activity and, ultimately, of humans’ extraordinary evolutionary success. ACT’s novel portrayal of the Big Two entails a wide variety of previously unforeseen behavioural consequences, including a novel account of social influence. The state-of-the-art account presupposes the existence of an innate tendency to conform to majority norms. ACT questions the existence of such an innate tendency and offers an alternative with far-reaching implications for many theories across social sciences and urgent societal challenges in the sphere of social influence. My interdisciplinary team will empirically test ACT and its novel account of social influence. We will use new, tailor-made methodology in laboratory experiments, formal evolutionary models, Big Data, and panel studies.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedIstituzione ospitante
68161 Mannheim
Germania