TY - JOUR A1 - Schauenburg, Gesche A1 - Conrad, Markus A1 - von Scheve, Christian A1 - Barber, Horacio A. A1 - Ambrasat, Jens A1 - Aryani, Arash A1 - Schröder, Tobias T1 - Making sense of social interaction : emotional coherence drives semantic integration as assessed by event-related potentials JF - Neuropsychologia N2 - We compared event-related potentials during sentence reading, using impression formation equations of a model of affective coherence, to investigate the role of affective content processing during meaning making. The model of Affect Control Theory (ACT; Heise, 1979, 2007) predicts and quantifies the degree to which social interactions deflect from prevailing social norms and values - based on the affective meanings of involved concepts. We tested whether this model can predict the amplitude of brain waves traditionally associated with semantic processing. To this end, we visually presented sentences describing basic subject-verb-object social interactions and measured event-related potentials for final words of sentences from three different conditions of affective deflection (low, medium, high) as computed by a variant of the ACT model (Schröder, 2011). Sentence stimuli were closely controlled across conditions for alternate semantic dimensions such as contextual constraints, cloze probabilities, co-occurrences of subject-object and verb-object relations. Personality characteristics (schizotypy, Big Five) were assessed to account for individual differences, assumed to influence emotion-language interactions in information processing. Affective deflection provoked increased negativity of ERP waves during the P2/N2 and N400 components. Our data suggest that affective incoherence is perceived as conflicting information interfering with early semantic processing and that increased respective processing demands – in particular in the case of medium violations of social norms - linger on until the N400 time window classically associated with the integration of concepts into embedding context. We conclude from these results that affective meanings influence basic stages of meaning making. KW - Affect Control Theory KW - Interaktion KW - Affektive Entwicklung Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.01.002 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 125 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Amsterdam CY - Elsevier ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ambrasat, Jens A1 - von Scheve, Christian A1 - Schauenburg, Gesche A1 - Conrad, Markus A1 - Schröder, Tobias T1 - Unpacking the Habitus BT - Meaning Making Across Lifestyles JF - Sociological Forum N2 - The concept of habitus refers to socially stratified patterns of perception, classification, and thinking that are supposed to bring about specific lifestyles. Until now, research on the links between stratification and lifestyles has accounted for the habitus mainly in conceptual and theoretical terms, and studies directly measuring habitus and its association with stratification and lifestyles are rare. The present study conceptualizes the habitus as an individual-level pattern of meaning making and suggests an operationalization that is commonly used in identity research. Using survey data of 3,438 respondents, the study investigates associations between different lifestyles and patterns of meaning making. Results show, first, that self-related meanings vary systematically across lifestyle categories and mirror respondents' stratification position. Second, the meanings of various social concepts also vary significantly across lifestyle categories and partly reflect descriptive lifestyle characteristics. In sum, the study presents a plausible operationalization of (parts of) the habitus and advances our understanding of its mediating position between stratification and lifestyles. KW - Habitus KW - Studie KW - Lebensstil KW - Soziale Schichtung Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12293 SN - 1573-7861 VL - 31 IS - 4 SP - 994 EP - 1017 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schauenburg, Gesche A1 - Ambrasat, Jens A1 - Schröder, Tobias A1 - von Scheve, Christian A1 - Conrad, Markus T1 - Emotional connotations of words related to authority and community JF - Behavior Research Methods N2 - We present a database of 858 German words from the semantic fields of authority and community, which represent core dimensions of human sociality. The words were selected on the basis of co-occurrence profiles of representative keywords for these semantic fields. All words were rated along five dimensions, each measured by a bipolar semantic-differential scale: Besides the classic dimensions of affective meaning (valence, arousal, and potency), we collected ratings of authority and community with newly developed scales. The results from cluster, correlational, and multiple regression analyses on the rating data suggest a robust negativity bias for authority valuation among German raters recruited via university mailing lists, whereas community ratings appear to be rather unrelated to the well-established affective dimensions. Furthermore, our data involve a strong overall negative correlation—rather than the classical U-shaped distribution—between valence and arousal for socially relevant concepts. Our database provides a valuable resource for research questions at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology. It can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article. KW - Emotion KW - Konnotation KW - Gemeinschaft KW - Bewertung KW - Gefühl Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0494-7 SN - 1554-3528 VL - 47 IS - 3 SP - 720 EP - 735 PB - Springer CY - New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ambrasat, Jens A1 - von Scheve, Christian A1 - Conrad, Markus A1 - Schauenburg, Gesche A1 - Schröder, Tobias T1 - Consensus and stratification in the affective meaning of human sociality JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America N2 - We investigate intrasocietal consensus and variation in affective meanings of concepts related to authority and community, two elementary forms of human sociality. Survey participants (n = 2,849) from different socioeconomic status (SES) groups in German society provided ratings of 909 social concepts along three basic dimensions of affective meaning. Results show widespread consensus on these meanings within society and demonstrate that a meaningful structure of socially shared knowledge emerges from organizing concepts according to their affective similarity. The consensus finding is further qualified by evidence for subtle systematic variation along SES differences. In relation to affectively neutral words, high-status individuals evaluate intimacy-related and socially desirable concepts as less positive and powerful than middle- or low-status individuals, while perceiving antisocial concepts as relatively more threatening. This systematic variation across SES groups suggests that the affective meaning of sociality is to some degree a function of social stratification. KW - Sozialverhalten KW - Interaktion KW - Cluster-Analyse KW - Emotion KW - Meinung Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313321111 SN - 0027-8424 VL - 111 IS - 22 SP - 8001 EP - 8006 PB - NAS CY - Washington, DC ER -