Alan Fiske - US grants

The proposed research will investigate the nature of the implicit models people use to construct, understand and evaluate social relationships. The research focuses on the ways in which four models structure social interaction in a wide variety of domains: work, decision making, women's relationships, marriage systems, socialization and the formation of new social relationships, moral standards and the definition of transgression, as well as interpretation of the moral significance of misfortune. The project will study the formal mathematical structures which map each of the four types of social relationship, and the distinctive mode of symbolic representation in which each model characteristically is encoded. The proposal shows how our studies of these domains complement each other to yield a synergistic understanding of the fundamental models which underlie them all. The basic method will be ethnographic participant observation and interviewing among the Moose in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Microcomputer text search and retrieval software will aid in the derivation of reliable and unbiased inductive inferences from the qualitative ethnographic data. To complement this ethnographic approach, the project includes interviews with victims of a variety of misfortunes (including AIDS) in both Burkina Faso and the U.S. The plan also includes a learning, memory, and communication experiment to investigate the modes of symbolic encoding of the four models, as well as a field interview procedure for testing what kinds of quantitative transformations leave the qualitative structure of each type of social relationship intact. The study promises to clarify how people meet each other's social expectations and moral standards to constitute mutually intelligible and fulfilling relationships. So it should shed indirect light to help elucidate a wide range of factors related to mental health, particularly in regard to the conditions for effective and constructively coordinated psychosocial functioning.

The first Conference on Social Cognitive Neuroscience will be held on the UCLA campus in April 2001. This conference will highlight the new but fast growing field of Social Cognitive Neuroscience. Symposia will focus on Social Relations and Theory of Mind, Emotion, Control and Automaticity, Attitudes and Attitude Change, and Stereotyping and Social Perception. Each symposium will consist of research reports using neuroimaging, neuropsychological, or computational modeling methodologies. Additional panel discussions will allow cognitive neuroscientists and social scientists to discuss ways in which important questions from the social sciences can be tested using the methods of cognitive neuroscience. There will also infrastructure talks focusing on developing coherent training programs in social cognitive neuroscience and securing funding for this sort of interdisciplinary research. There will also be a poster session to allow for rapid transmission of other research findings. Informal sessions will allow additional opportunities for researchers to become acquainted and to share their latest research results. The conference will help to inform the new emphasis at NSF on cognitive neuroscience (NSF 01-041).

This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Relationship Science Program (IRSP), a multidisciplinary doctoral training program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The objective is to educate research scientists who possess the theoretical foundation to study complex interpersonal relationship processes and the associations between social relationships and biology, behavior, culture and society. Trainees will develop the methodological tools to conduct state-of-the-art research and the professional skills to collaborate effectively across disciplines, to disseminate their work to diverse audiences, and to succeed in research-oriented careers. The IRSP training program emphasizes research mentorship and a year-long lab rotation outside of the home discipline. The innovative curriculum includes an integrative graduate seminar on relationship science, a rich set of elective seminars, advanced methodology workshops, and a weekly Relationship Science Forum emphasizing cutting-edge research, the impact of social and cultural diversity on relationships, and professional development. The broader impacts of the program include providing information to the public via a website and an annual conference on diversity in social relationships, and informing public policy debates about relationship science findings. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.