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Theoretical and Empirical Modeling of Identity and Sentiments in Collaborative Groups (THEMIS.COG) was an interdisciplinary research collaboration of computer scientists and social scientists from the University of Waterloo (Canada), Potsdam University of Applied Sciences (Germany), and Dartmouth College (USA). This white paper summarizes the results of our research at the end of the grant term. Funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform’s Digging Into Data initiative, the project aimed at theoretical and empirical modeling of identity and sentiments in collaborative groups. Understanding the social forces behind self-organized collaboration is important because technological and social innovations are increasingly generated through informal, distributed processes of collaboration, rather than in formal organizational hierarchies or through market forces. Our work used a data-driven approach to explore the social psychological mechanisms that motivate such collaborations and determine their success or failure. We focused on the example of GitHub, the world’s current largest digital platform for open, collaborative software development. In contrast to most, purely inductive contemporary approaches leveraging computational techniques for social science, THEMIS.COG followed a deductive, theory-driven approach. We capitalized on affect control theory, a mathematically formalized theory of symbolic interaction originated by sociologist David R. Heise and further advanced in previous work by some of the THEMIS.COG collaborators, among others. Affect control theory states that people control their social behaviours by intuitively attempting to verify culturally shared feelings about identities, social roles, and behaviour settings. From this principle, implemented in computational simulation models, precise predictions about group dynamics can be derived. It was the goal of THEMIS.COG to adapt and apply this approach to study the GitHub collaboration ecosystem through a symbolic interactionist lens. The project contributed substantially to the novel endeavor of theory development in social science based on large amounts of naturally occurring digital data.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed anxiety disorders and a health concern that has a significant impact on the affected individuals’ quality of life. Although there is a need to develop methods and tools to support those affected by SAD, it is especially challenging to conduct participatory design with this psychologically vulnerable group of people. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a participatory format built on a toolkit, a cultural probe and an online prototyping workshop to gain insights into the challenges and needs experienced in the everyday lives of those affected by severe social anxiety. We provide the theoretical framework for designing a participatory format for this vulnerable group, introduce and discuss our methodological approach, and present the lessons learned from implementing and evaluating the format in two workshop sessions with a total of 15 participants.
We argue that objectivity is acquired by learning to refer to particular situations, that is, by developing episodicity. This contrasts with the widespread idea that genericity is crucial in developing humans’ ability to conceive of an objective world. According to the collective intentionality account, objectivity is acquired by contrasting one’s particular perspective in the “here and now” with a generic group perspective on how things are generally. However, this line of argument rests on confusing two independent notions of genericity: social and worldly genericity. Holding these two notions apart shows that there is no coherent developmental route from episodicity to objectivity via genericity. In effect, the collective intentionality account presupposes objectivity. Alternatively, episodicity may develop by enculturation into the common practice of spatial-indexical use. This ability establishes an initial, socially shared spatiotemporal reference system comprising the basis for objectivity.
The present study investigated whether 7-month-old infants attribute directionality to an object after having observed it engage in agentive behavior and whether they maintain this attribution even when the agent is presented statically. Infants were familiarized with an object displaying either agentive behavioral cues (self-propelled, context-sensitive movement) or non-agentive motion (the same movement pattern caused by external factors). In a subsequent spatial-cueing procedure, the agent was displayed statically at the center of the screen. Gaze latencies were assessed for targets appearing at a location congruent or incongruent with the position of the agent’s formerly leading end. Only infants that had observed the object move in an agentive manner showed shorter gaze latencies for congruent compared to incongruent targets, suggesting facilitation of attention toward a location congruent with the agent’s prior action direction. Results provide evidence that infants attribute directionality to novel agents based on behavioral agency cues, that this directional representation is maintained even when the agent is stationary, and that it guides infants’ covert attention.
The ability to refer to objects – singular reference – is arguably the decisive innovation on the way to human propositional cognition. This article argues that object individuation requires singular reference because basic singular terms, namely spatial indexicals, provide a symbolic frame of reference for object individuation. The authors suggest that singular reference is intrinsically connected to essential characteristics of propositionality: among other things, it guarantees the situation-independence of meaning, allows for the distinction between truth and falsehood, and enables us to think about possibilities. The authors sketch how singular reference gives rise to the development of predication, the powerful logical tool of quantification, and forms the basis for differentiating between belief and desire.
Germany has become the most important destination country for young refugees in Europe (Destatis, 2021). Vocational education and training can make an important contribution to overcome educational barriers and gain participation in society (Will & Hohmut, 2020). Since 2015, rural regions have faced new challenges in establishing effective support systems for young apprentices with forced migration experience (Ohliger et al., 2017). The participatory LaeneAs research project seeks to identify educational barriers and to promote successful educational pathways for young refugees in vocational training. In four distinct rural areas in Germany, stakeholders in formal, non-formal, and informal learning environments and young refugees will be brought together in real-world laboratories. The authors aim to open space for a co-constructive knowledge production process between scientific and political stakeholders, educational practitioners, and refugee youth. Real-world laboratories are a socio-spatial methodology that combines research and a sustainable capacity building process. The lifeworld expertise will be used for a contextual condition analysis of structural, societal, and individual barriers to education as well as for practice transfer. Building on the discussion of the current state of research and the identification of significant gaps in the practice and research landscape, this essay will focus on the critical discussion of the methodological implementation of the study.
The current study investigates infants' and toddlers' understanding of teasing interactions and its effect on subsequent social interactions. Teasing is a special kind of social interaction due to its dual nature: It consists of a slightly provocative contingent action accompanied by positive ostensive emotional cues. Teasing thus presents an especially interesting test case to inform us about young children's abilities to deal with complex social intentions.
In a first experiment, we looked at 9-, 12-, and 18-month-old infants' ability to understand and differentiate a teasing intention from a trying intention and a refuse intention. We found that by 12 months of age, infants react differently (gaze, reach) and by 18 months they smile more in reaction to the Tease condition.
In the second experiment, we tested 13-, 20- and 30-month-old children in closely matched purely playful and teasing situations. We also investigated potential social effects of teasing interactions on a subsequent affiliation sequence. Twenty- and 30-month-old children smile more in the Teasing than in the Play condition. For the 30-month-old toddlers, additionally, number of laughs is much higher in the Tease than in the Play condition. No effect on affiliation could be found.
Thus, from very early in development, infants and toddlers are able to differentiate teasing from superficially similar but serious behavior and from around 18 months of age they enjoy it more. Infants and toddlers are able to process a complex social intention like teasing. Findings are discussed regarding infant and toddler intention understanding abilities.
Digital media are being used more and more frequently by children and for a wide variety of functions. However, there are no studies to date that examine the effect of such use on peer interactions and the occurrence of prosocial behavior in peers. For parents, it has been found that when using digital media only few parents respond responsively to their children’s attempts at interaction and also very rarely, they communicate with them verbally and nonverbally. In the present study, we investigated how playing a game in a digital versus analog form influences interactions (especially prosocial behavior) of peers. We used an experimental situation, where 24 dyads of 4-10-year-old children were examined. Each of the dyads was randomly assigned to a condition where they played either a digital or analog game together. Various interaction parameters and prosocial behavior during and after the game were analyzed. Results show that children in the analog condition communicated verbally with each other more often, responded more often to interaction attempts of their partners and showed less often negative forms of interaction and more often positive forms of interaction than children in the digital condition. However, the type of medium had no influence on prosocial behavior after the game situation. These results suggest that the format of a game (digital vs. analog) has a decisive influence on peer interactions concerning their communication during but not their prosocial behavior after the game situation.
Bayesian affect control theory is a model of affect-driven social interaction underconditions of uncertainty. In this paper, we investigate how the operationalization of uncertainty in the model can be related to the disruption of social orders—societal pressures to adapt to ongoing environmental and technological change. First, we study the theoretical tradeoffs between three kinds of uncertainty as groups navigate external problems: validity (the predictability of the environment, including of other agents), coherence (the predictability of interpersonal affective dynamics), and dependence (the predictability of affective meanings). Second, we discuss how these uncertainty tradeoffs are related to contemporary political conflict and polarization in the context of societal transitions. To illustrate the potential of our model to analyze the socio-emotional consequences of uncertainty, we present a simulation of diverging individual affective meanings of occupational identities under uncertainty in a climate change mitigation scenario based on events in Germany. Finally, we sketch a possible research agenda to substantiate the novel, but yet mostly conjectural, ideas put forward in this paper.