The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) provides a novel theoretical lens to help us understand the mechanisms underlying a variety of social psychological phenomena that we here refer to as “social resonance”. An interdisciplinary approach towards these questions promises to allow us to go even further: Through understanding how MOO creates social resonance with an Other, we can create feedback loops that move beyond the traditional one-shot manipulation of classic social psychology paradigms. Thus, instead of simple mimicry of basic repetitive behaviors (e.g., foot tapping; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999), our vision for future work provides the foundation for understanding the development of social resonance in real-time. In the short term, this implies better ecological validity. In the longer term, our approach promises to help us understand also large-scale and interactive “social resonance” phenomena – e.g., positive collective emotions (online, face-to-face), or more problematic phenomena such as social exclusion or the propagation of hate speech. Overall, the proposed project thus aims to (1) evolve and test TEC to account for the social psychological phenomenon of social resonance, and (2) to lay the necessary technical foundations towards a fruitful application of new methods in this field.
PIs: Bernhard Hommel
DFG SPP "The Active Self" 