Doctoral Dissertation Research: Structure and Sentiment: A Multivariate Study of the Affective Bases of Social Relationships

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral student Matthew Gervais (University of California, Los Angeles), under the guidance of Dr. Daniel M.T. Fessler, will investigate the functions of affect within male social relationships. Social relationships are the cornerstone of human adaptation, and converging lines of evidence suggest that affect is integral to the adaptive regulation of social behavior. Yet theoretical treatments of the structure of affect remain impoverished of real world data, and controlled behavioral experiments have rarely been applied to established dyadic relationships in a small-scale society. This study will comprise the first empirical evaluation of a model of social affect grounded in ethnographic, neuroscientific, and evolutionary considerations. The relationships to be studied can be viewed most clearly in a relatively circumscribed and small-scale social context. Accordingly, the research will be carried out in a fishing-horticultural community on Yasawa Island, Fiji. The researcher will integrate systematic methods from diverse disciplines -- including cultural domain analysis, an implicit attitude measure, and a series of economic games -- to map relational attitudes and emotions onto individual traits and resources, relationship histories, and measured relationship behavior. This multivariate modeling approach will shed light on the causal links among these variables, with a focus on the role of social attitudes in mediating the effects of individual and dyadic variables on behavior within relationships. This research has broad theoretical significance. It promises to illuminate the affective bases and structure of social relationships, topics central to contemporary debates in anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, and economics. The research also will introduce several methodological innovations that will facilitate the cross-cultural comparison of affect and face-to-face social relationships. In addition to supporting the education of a social scientist, this research will train a member of an underrepresented group, a Pacific Islander, in research methods and data management techniques. It will also extend the research infrastructure of a long-term study of norms and social behavior in a region experiencing the initial stages of market integration.